Changed Perspective by Julia

Changed Perspective by Julia - July 2026 Scholarship Essay

I have spent seventeen years being the “nice girl”, but for three months of my junior year, I was the most hated person in school. Playing Regina George in our school’s production of Mean Girls was a massive academic and creative learning curve for me. To embody a villain like Regina meant more than wearing pink heels. It required a deep dive into character analysis. This analytical topic challenged me at first because it forced me to find a way to relate to someone who was the complete opposite of everything that I stand for.

After every rehearsal, I found myself apologizing to my castmates for the cruel words that were coming out of my mouth. Being unkind felt like I was betraying myself and everything that I believed in. I have always prided myself on being a very empathetic and kind person. A typical day in my life includes making care packages at lunch for the club I started where we donate care packages to parents with babies in the N.I.C.U., and babysitting for my young neighbors after school. To conclude the day, I walk my dog, Sadie, while talking to my dad about his day and spend time with my little sister. If you asked anyone what I am like, one of the first things they would say is extremely caring and kind.

As each rehearsal made me feel more and more guilty, I had to use my critical thinking to figure out why I felt this way compared to other roles. I didn’t feel like this in previous years when I performed in Annie or Mamma Mia. With those roles, the biggest challenge was just memorization of lines. Regina was a cognitive challenge because of her total lack of empathy. I found it immensely difficult to connect my compassion with her cruelty.

One day, I realized that to play this character well, I needed to stop judging her and begin analyzing her background. I had to use critical thinking to look past the surface behaviors in the script and fully understand the psychological motivations underneath.

When we started rehearsing the song, “Someone Gets Hurt”, it hit me (like a bus) that Regina isn’t just malicious for fun. This scene displays the first time that Regina feels like she is losing control when she finds out that the new girl, Cady, has a crush on her ex-boyfriend. Underneath all of her malice, my analysis revealed a girl in desperate need of control, fueled by insecurity and the fear of being forgotten. I decided to highlight this vulnerability in the song, using logic and research to connect with what she was truly feeling.

Most people would think that playing a villain makes an actor more arrogant, but it actually did the opposite for me. By treating character analysis as an academic exercise, I gained the perspective of someone whose shoes I never thought I would be in. This experience taught me that people who act mean are often very unhappy with themselves and scared of being vulnerable.

As the final curtain closed, I stepped out of the pink heels and back into my own shoes, but they didn’t fit the same as before. Critical thinking is not just about solving complicated equations and knowing all of the correct answers, but it is about having the intellectual and emotional capacity to understand even the people who seem impossible to like. I am still the same “nice girl”, but now I am a critical thinker who sees the world through different eyes.