Dear Lin-Manuel Miranda,
I want to tell you how you changed my life and helped me shape my future.
As a junior in high school, it was time for me to start to think about college, and that scared me. I was very late to the college train and I had no clue what I wanted to do with my life. I was bouncing around between theatre, cosmetology, and even business.
I set a rule for myself that when a new show comes out that I’m generally interested in, I won’t listen to the soundtrack until I see the show. That way, iIt won’t be spoiled and I’m not singing along with the characters. When Hamilton came out, I knew that it was going to be a hard ticket to get. In September of 2016, I made the decision to listen to it while studying in the library. I stopped what I was doing., I was intrigued, I was curious, I felt everything in between. This new concept of integrating hip hop, rap and R&B into musicals was something that was almost never thought of. And to set it during the American Revolution was genius. It was new, it shook up Broadway, it got people talking. It was just, genius.
Hamilton brought out a passion in me that I never knew I had and that was American History. Whenever we would study the American Revolution in class I would always perk up more, I would answer more questions, I would get better grades, but I didn’t notice this trend until I listened to Hamilton. It made me want to study it more, it made me think about it more. And before I knew it, I was applying to schools as a history major.
I guess what I’m trying to say is thank you. Thank you for helping me find my passion. Thank you for helping me discover what I really love. I owe a lot of my future to you and your musical and I cannot thank you enough.
HCXO,
Maria