E4 Balancing Acts: How to Earn Your Degree While Touring as a Circus Artist

Today we’re diving into a topic that’s both ambitious and extremely practical: what it really looks like to pursue a college degree or take online courses while performing professionally on contract.

First things first—never forget your job is to be a performer. A class, test, or assignment should never interfere with your responsibilities on stage. That’s a non-negotiable. Setting a hard boundary around that will protect your career and your integrity.

But here’s why this is a conversation worth having:

·       You will never regret investing in yourself and continuing to learn.

·       The ability to build toward your future while performing gives you more freedom in what comes next.

·       I know artists who are now psychologists and lawyers—and they started their academic journey while balancing a full time performance career.

This episode is for you if:

·       You don’t want to miss out on a performance career but getting a degree is also non-negotiable.

·       You want to build something alongside your performance career—not instead of it.

·       You believe you can do both—with intention.

💡 I’d love to hear what you’re navigating right now — find me on Instagram at @theartistbehindtheart. And don’t miss what’s coming: I’m kicking off a free 3-day artist mentorship with 👉 @Arete.ActDevelopment, focused on strengthening your submission materials.

Thanks so much for listening to The Artist Behind the Art.
This podcast exists to support performers in building sustainable, aligned, and castable careers — beyond just the skills.

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Inside the Own the Stage Act Creation Mentorship, we bring personalized feedback and clear strategy to your creative process — so every moment of your act is masterful, connected, and intentional. From entrance to bow.

The mentorship begins March 23rd, and the founding members round will be intimate and focused.

If you’re ready to build an act that makes an audience lean in and feel time stand still:

📩 Email: Jennifer@aretementorship.com

📱 DM: @arete.actdevelopment

I’d love to see what we can create together.

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Remember — you already have what it takes.
 The question is: are you ready to prove it to yourself?

Until next time — show up big and own the stage.

Transcript

Speaker 6 0:01

Welcome to the Artist Behind the Art, the podcast that lists the curtain on what it takes to thrive as a professional performer. I'm your host, Jennifer Pierce, artist coach, creative strategist, and lifelong advocate for performers who are ready to go from unsure to unforgettable. This is where the gatekeeping ends and your journey to thriving in the industry begins. Let's dive in.

Speaker 5 0:24

Welcome back to the Artist Behind the Art. Today's episode is all about how to earn your degree while touring as a performing artist. And today's guest is someone very special to me, both a former student and someone who is now part of my family. Mary Nerad is a multidisciplinary circus artist specializing in silks, Aerial hoop bottle walking and duo rollerskating with a foundation in music and dance. She brings an incredible sense of story and connection to every performance, the kind that makes you feel like you've truly shared a moment with her on stage. When I was coming up in my career, I remember asking my peers if they were pursuing something professionally and so many would say, I can't. I have to finish college first. But then I started seeing a few friends who did both guys who were performing, touring and studying, and not just surviving, but thriving in it. And it completely changed the way about what I thought was possible for artists. And that's what makes Mary's story so powerful. She's living proof that you don't have to choose between your education and your performance career, that both can strengthen each other when you approach them with purpose and balance. So if you've ever thought you had to choose between your education and your career, this conversation is proof that you don't.

1:47

Hi, Mary. Welcome to the podcast. Hi. Thanks for having me. I am so excited to have this conversation about how you truly prioritize your career, making sure that you show up for your shows, for your training, but also are able to pursue a degree. So what is your long-term vision? So what, what would you say that ultimately after your performance career that you would like to use your degree for? Yeah. So after my performance career is over and hopefully I get to choose when it's over, um, I want to become a physiotherapist for other circus artists and other extreme athletes. I love that it really ties into what you're gonna learn over your whole career, and then you're gonna be able to go on and really just help athletes and artists really just then have a great career after that. I think it's really cool because while I'm working on getting my degree now, I feel like also the more I forge forward in my circus career and the more I grow in that area, the more credible I am as a fit physio later on in life. So I feel like they feed into each other in a really cool way. I love that you're kind of doing all of your, your preparation right now and you're gonna carry all that forward and really be able to help artists, so that's awesome. Yeah, and I think it's extra cool because talking to physios now, I hear, I hear how they don't get it. Some really get it and the ones that really get it, really get it. But then there's a lot that don't, and it's really interesting to like, hear the gaps that they have of like the actual functional application of certain things that we're experiencing, like we. We can't just take a week off. We can't just take two weeks off when we're in, you know, the, the high peak performance season. It's just not an option. And. I think it'll be really cool to be able to use my own experience to help fill that gap like the physios have, that I've been lucky enough to work with. Awesome. I love that. So kind of moving into how you integrate both the performance career and also pursuing a degree, there's obviously a lot of planning and preparation that goes into that being. Feasible. so how do you plan your semester, or what factors do you, think about when you're choosing your classes? So I think the main factor that goes into it is what kind of contracts and what kind of work I have lined up for that semester because. Like, for example, if there's a lot of international travel with a lot of different time zones and time changes, it can be really, really hard in a way that's not necessarily super manageable. But if you are just on like a bus tour within like, you know, just the us, the few hour time change that you have to deal with is super manageable. So it just, it really depends on that. And what have you found when you have selected, some courses that you would say are, more demanding than others? How have you used that in, let's say, you're in a rehearsal period and you have a little bit more of a crunch time. How have you kind of integrated that into, making sure you're prioritizing the career aspect? Well, a lot of it is just, just being aware and being honest with yourself. So when you chose your courses, when you were in a resident show, how does that differ from when you selected ones when you are on tour? Oh, it's super, super different. A resident show is easy. It's so easy, it's like a nine to five. Like, you hang out, you know, you do your training, you do whatever your life stuff is, and then you go to your shows and you go to work, and then you go home. And that's easy, you know?'cause you just, you wake up in the morning, you do your school, it's part of your day, and then you go to work and it doesn't matter. touring is a little bit more, uh, calculated, I think would be the good word. You have to be really, really strategic and really, really honest with yourself about. When and how you can get everything done. Like you need to be comfortable with, you know, not always going out and doing all the social stuff. You, you need to be comfortable with being the silly person who's listening to a lecture while you're doing your makeup at your station. Like you need to be okay with being that person. Which I don't think is a big deal. Personally, it was always pretty silly. All my castmates thought it was silly. They were like, oh, are you in school? And it's like literally right now. Yeah. Do you wanna say hi to my class? And it was always just, you know, it's not a huge deal. but you definitely need to be. Just really aware of that and okay with making those adjustments. You know, also you have to like sometimes invest in like, you know, more data for like internet access and things of that nature to be able to do it while you're traveling, while you are on a bus, while you're in the middle of nowhere. While, you know, at the airport you have to invest in VPNs when you're outta the country thing. Things like that, just to make it. Accessible, but that makes it sound like it's a really hard thing and when you do it in actual application, it's really not a big deal. you just have to think ahead. Definitely. So it's so funny, when I was on tour, I had some friends that were doing their college courses as well, and while we did have internet, they actually had to do all of their written work. And then when we would get somewhere where they could mail it, they had to mail their coursework. Back to their professors. That's crazy. So yeah, things have changed and I think the accessibility of being able to integrate this into your performance career is probably at one of the easiest times ever. Oh, for sure. I, I can't imagine it doing it at a time when we didn't have access to the internet the way that we do now. You know? And now, ever since COVID too, like having online classes and having the structure that they have now. Just, it's so cut and dry and easy and forward. It's awesome. Yeah. I love the opportunities that we have that are out there now. what would you say, or just what has been the maximum amount of courses that you've taken while performing and what did that teach you? The most that I've taken at once while doing like a full workload was three courses, and, um, that was a little too much. I believed in myself a little too much. I, you know, that whole thing and I definitely feel like I should have, I learned my lesson. Two is the max that I personally should take. I'm sure everybody's different, but personally two is my max when I'm on the road because. Yeah, it's just a lot to juggle. Three is three is when you have like a chill time. Yeah, definitely. I love that.

Jennifer 8:19

All right, Mary, let's go ahead and talk about time commitment. On average, how many hours a day does your most demanding class require from you?

Mary 8:29

So I'm definitely one of those people that likes to batch their time where I will take like a day or two a week that I know that I have like days off. I have huge travel days. I have. Just like a chunk of time where I know I don't need to like be present for anything. I just, you know, have the time off. And usually I take those two days to get everything done for the whole week. So I'll like either set up shop in a coffee shop and like probably knock out like two or three coffees and just do it. Or I'll have like an eight hour bus ride and I'll just be like, I'm using all my data today. And just lock in and get it done.

Jennifer 9:06

I love that. And I think, you know, for some people they need to have that kind of everyday touchpoint, but it just shows that there's many different ways that you can figure out what works for you and still get to the end goal.

Mary 9:18

Absolutely.

Jennifer 9:19

All right, so as far as the mental and emotional energy that school takes, is there any surprises that you've learned about how that compares to your performance work?

Mary 9:30

I, I personally think it is way more. Emotionally taxing and requires way more energy than performing does for me. But I've also been performing since I was really little, and it's just, for me, it's just a part of life as it is for a lot of artists. You know, you wake up and it's nothing to run your act. It's nothing to run your act twice, you know? And when you're in the swing of doing shows, it's nothing to do your show if you have a one day or that you're just doing one show. It's like. We're barely working. It's so easy. Like that's just how it feels. And I would say that school never feels like that. You're never like, ah, I just got one paper, whatever. Oh my gosh, yes. You know, I just got one test. There's, it's not like that. Um, so I would say definitely there's a lot of energy and emotional commitment that goes into that, especially for me because. Yeah,

Jennifer 10:24

I love that. No, that, that's really, I think for someone that is considering this to make sure that, is it a season, is it, um, a semester they should take off? Do they have that capacity to do it well?

Mary 10:35

Yeah, you definitely need to be really honest with yourself and that's definitely a lesson that I learned kind of the hard way. you have to be really transparent with like your professors and with your school and stuff too. Where I was like, I need to be really honest, like this is my life. This is my job, this is what my world looks like. There's a chance that like I'm gonna need an extension. There's a chance that I'm gonna be on a ship and the WiFi's gonna be out for like four days because we're in the middle of international waters. Like there's a chance that. I'm gonna be in another country and the VPN's gonna stop working like there. It's just you have to be really real and transparent. And a lot of times if you do that in the beginning, professors are really supportive and they're really helpful. And sometimes, in my experience, they've even let me have access to work early so I can, instead of having to wait for each checkpoint, they'll let me just work as much as I can so I can get as ahead as I possibly can and just different things like that. Really help support it and make it possible.

Jennifer 11:33

That's awesome. That really just goes into, that preparation is key. And then just connecting with your professors. I love that advice. I think that's really fantastic. do you do any, looking into the professors and, how they, handle coursework or what their tolerance is for, let's say work that's turned in late? what have you found and what do you do to, navigate that?

Mary 11:55

Absolutely. Rate my professor, but like the website is the best thing in the whole world because not all professors take excuses of any kind. There are some professors that they have very black and white policies where if it's late, it's late, and that's it. And for me, that's not a great option because. Sometimes it's gonna be late and it needs to be okay and it needs to not tank my entire average. And yeah, so Rate My Professor is definitely your best friend. You deep dive, you read all the things, all that you possibly can about them and yeah,

Jennifer 12:28

I love that. That's such good advice.

Speaker 12:30

All right. So what have you learned about yourself through this balancing act of artist and student?

Speaker 2 12:36

The biggest thing that I've learned is how helpful it is to have something in your life that exercises your brain and not just your body, because it just. It makes things easier to navigate in work because you have something else going on in your life and you put less emphasis on things that don't matter. You really only have space to put pressure and energy towards the things that matter, you know? And even just as a circus artist, it's so good to have other. Things outside of your job, and it's really easy for us to fall into that trap of our whole life being about circus because our friends do circus. Our work is circus. Our hobby is circus. Everything is circus and it's so easy to get trapped in that bubble and being able to. Have other outlets in your life is so, so helpful. So having one that is just for your brain is helpful, but also having other physical activities, of course, is a good thing.

Speaker 13:35

Definitely. And I think also if you think of that uh, time gap after you finish a contract and then you come off and you're used to a busy pace schedule and now you have nothing, I'm sure that you found that in those times it's really helped filled that space and help you transition.

Speaker 2 13:52

It's really helpful. It gives you something to focus on and it. It helps keep the post-contract blues at bay a little bit. You know, it, it fills obviously not all the space, but part of the space, which is super, super nice for your mental health and. It also takes up way more space than you think when you're not doing anything, which you know is obviously really nice.

Speaker 14:13

I love that. And then how has your approach to just workload changed over time? What do you do differently now?

Speaker 2 14:21

I definitely think more about budgeting. Other things into my life. For a really, really long time, everything was just training. It was training, training, training, Forever. The priority was training. Nothing else could take the place of my training. Nothing else could exist if I didn't train. I, it was the number one priority, and now I feel like. Now that I work full-time and I perform regularly, I feel like it's really important to make sure that that is not the case because you'll drive yourself crazy. And it's easy to forget that circus is your job. It's not everything. So yeah, that's definitely the main thing that I do differently now that school has definitely helped me do.

Speaker 15:03

I love that. It's all about that balancing of just, um, where you are, where you want to be and how you are gonna balance your time now.

Speaker 3 15:11

All right, so what are your top three recommendations for performers thinking about getting a degree or taking courses while they are working?

Speaker 4 15:21

I'd say the first one is you need to be really honest with yourself. You need to be forgiving with yourself. You need to be just hold a lot of space for yourself because it is hard and it's an adjustment and it's not easy. And making sure that you have that, you know, gentleness with yourself makes a huge difference in the long one. The second one would be to, to have like a path. You know, you have to want it. You have to be like, this is the reason that I'm getting the degree. Because if you don't have that, it's really easy to lose the motivation and lose the direction because if you're just taking classes to take classes, for me personally. That would not work. I, I need to be goal oriented in all of my choices, and I'm sure there's a lot of people that are very different than me, but personally there's been a lot of times where I really struggled with like keeping motivation and having that goal in mind of what I want sometimes was the thing that made it so I could stay focused just a little bit longer or care just a little bit more. And the third thing would be to not let. Your identity get too wrapped up in any of the things that you're doing. You know, at the end of the day, you are you and how you do on a test, it's, it doesn't matter. It's not as, I mean of course it matters, but like it doesn't matter the way that it's going to feel. Like it matters when you're living on a tour bus doing 10 shows a week and your body hurts. It doesn't matter the way that you think it does, and just reminding yourself that. You are a human and you're allowed to make mistakes and you're, you're allowed to struggle. You're allowed to miss a homework assignment. You're, you're allowed to miss a discussion. You're, you're allowed to not go out with your friends because you have to go do your school. You're, you're allowed to use it as an excuse because you didn't wanna go out anyway. You know, it's just. Using it like that and thinking of it like that and keeping true to who you are, I think is probably one of the most important things.

Speaker 3 17:23

I love that. I love your perspective and just how you, um, really are being purposeful about why you're doing the course load, why, what, you know, how you're just future focused, but also making sure that you're staying grounded in who you are right now and how you use your time.

Speaker 4 17:39

Yeah. I think it's, it's a really cool thing that I feel like. A lot of people have the opportunity to do, but they don't necessarily realize that they do. And I also feel like doing my school has actually made me more grounded and made me have a more clear perspective of not just myself, but also other artists. Like it's, it's easier for me to be able to identify and relate to people who are also having a hard time with their own stuff. You know, people who are overwhelmed, people who have a large. Workload of another kind. Like there's lots of people with remote jobs on tour. There's lots of people with, you know, personal projects that they're doing and, and just even just personal things that are going on in their world. Like you're, you're just able to identify and relate to having extra things happening in a way that I think is really. It's really helpful, especially when you're spending so much time with a group of people. You're, you become everyone's support system for each other. I think it's just, it's, it's a good, it's a good bonding thing as

Speaker 3 18:34

well. For sure. I, I love the opportunity that being able to take college courses on tour for, let's say someone that. Their family has expectations of them. Not that they should be pursuing their degree for that, but I often find that, um, when I was coming up in my career, there was many times that I would ask people if they were pursuing something professionally and they would say they couldn't because they had to do college first. Yeah. And when I saw some of my friends pursuing both, and not only like. Doing it, but being successful, it was such an amazing, eyeopener that you could do both. And that on the other side is this other part of your life that is already built in and prepped for.

Speaker 4 19:22

Yeah, and honestly I think a lot of that is just people not knowing that it's an option. Like I think people get really, really wrapped up in the idea of going to work. And they forget that you can do both. You know you're not working 24 7. You have space for those things. You just have to make that intentional space. And I mean, I had no idea that it was an option until you talked to me about it. Like I remember I got my first like big kid away from home, like contract, and you were like, so Mary classes. And I was like, what do you mean you are like, you can do college, you should do college, you're gonna do college. I was like, okay, I guess I'm, I guess I'm doing college. And that's how it was presented to me. But I also, I wouldn't have thought of it if you hadn't, you know, presented it to me in that way and helped me understand that.

Speaker 3 20:08

Yeah. And I love, I think when you decided to start courses, I don't think the original decision was to pursue a degree in physical therapy, was it?

Speaker 4 20:18

No, it was not. When I first started my classes, I was actually having a really hard time because I was just taking classes to take classes.'cause there are like the general ones that you have to take no matter what. And I was like, okay, well. I should take these. And it was really, really hard. And I ended up taking like, I think two semesters off after I did like two semesters when I first started because I just, I had no direction and I had no purpose and I didn't want to do it. And I had no drive to do it and no motivation'cause there was no goal. And the moment that I realized that I wanted to study kinesiology was the moment that it became so much easier and so much more accessible. And suddenly there was time in my life. Look at that. I was busier, but there was so much more time for it. That's awesome. And that switch was just, it was, it was big.

Speaker 3 21:05

Awesome. So last question. What would you say to someone who's afraid that they're gonna burn out or not be able to handle both?

Speaker 4 21:15

You need to be really nice to yourself because there is a chance that that could happen. Because I definitely, there was, I took courses when I was on a contract in Dubai. And the time difference is crazy, and the show load was crazy and my coursework was crazy, and I did in fact get kind of burned out. It was too much and I, I personally felt that I didn't handle it well. And I think the best advice that I can give is that it might happen and it's okay.

Speaker 3 21:47

Yeah,

Speaker 4 21:47

it's okay if you do get burned out there. You're surrounded by people who will support you. You're surrounded by people that will help you go get a little treat, go get a little snack, go get a coffee, go whatever your version of a treat is, go get it. Do a face mask. It's gonna be okay. You're gonna get through it. You might get burned out, but you, you will be okay if you do.

Speaker 3 22:10

I love that. Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing your experiences, and I really hope this inspires someone that is thinking about integrating this into their just future and their daily life, that, from the advice that they now feel empowered.

Speaker 4 22:25

Yeah. I, I hope that it can do a good thing for someone.

Speaker 3 22:28

Awesome.

22:29

Thank you so much for listening today. I'd love to hear what you're navigating right now and what topics you want me to cover because this podcast is all about serving you and helping our community thrive. You can find me on Instagram at the Artist Behind the Art, also big announcement. I've been working on some. Artist mentorships and I'm gonna be kicking it off with a free three day mentorship. That's all about strengthening your submission materials and I can't wait to get to know more about you. Be sure to follow and like Arete Act development on Instagram. That is A-R-E-T-E ACT development. I want to be able to get. All of the details to you as soon as they're available. Alright guys, remember you already have what it takes. The question is, are you going to prove it to yourself? Until next time, show up big and own the stage.