Senior Charlotte Odusanya was surprised to find herself making it to Hollywood on American Idol earlier this year.

Odusanya described the show’s extensive audition process, starting with a five-hour line for the first judge. Once through that, she was sent to another producer who then approved her and helped her put together a video for the next level. The video got her to the fourth level–which meant more producers.

“I sang my songs, and they were talking the entire time I was singing. Just normal conversation like ‘hey how’s Sue doing? You wanna go get cheesecake after this?’” she recalled. “I mean, I get it because they were producers so that’s just the industry. I knew that people were bound to be messed up like that.” Despite this, they liked her and she moved on. “My [next] audition was at 7 am, and I didn’t finish until 12 am the next morning.”

Odusanya then moved on to the show’s Hollywood week.

“[Hollywood] was crazy. Like what you see on TV about it being crazy and people are all over the place, that was exactly what it was.”

As for the whole experience, Odusanya said that she won’t forget “the people. I still talk to the people every single day. It’s weird because in a way I was kind of rooting for other people more than I was myself.”

To anyone who sings, Odusanya said “go for it.”

“A lot of people who have beautiful voices have said to me ‘I’m too scared and I don’t want to do it’, and I understand that, but you should just go for it because at the end of the day, there’s nothing bad that can come from it.”

Before being on American Idol, Odusanya has been singing for her entire life.

“I like singing because you can make it your own… some people choose to go the pop route, some people choose to go the country route, but you can just go so many ways with it. You can write songs that are meaningful to you, and write about whatever you want,” she said.

In the fall, Odusanya plans to attend Emerson in Boston and major in Musical Theater. “Honestly, I’m going to see where my life is. I’ve always wanted to be on Broadway, so that’s what I’m mainly going to be focusing on: getting training before I even try and do anything.”