Aubrey Dollar
		Miss Independent When it came to growing up and moving on, free spirit Aubrey Dollar (Marina) wasn’t afraid to take chances — even at the risk of getting homesick.

	As a teenager in Raleigh, North Carolina, GUIDING LIGHT’s Aubrey Dollar (Marina) couldn’t wait to get out of Dodge. "Raleigh was fine, but I was really itching to get out," she recalls. "I wanted to see more, and I wanted to do more." Campus Blues So when it came time to start applying for colleges, Dollar decided that the time was right to spread her wings. Rather than joining the majority of her hometown friends at the University Of North Carolina’s Chapel Hill campus, Dollar set off for the acting conservatory at Boston University. "Which seemed like a really good idea on paper," she laughs. "I remember I helped all my friends move into their dorm rooms at UNC Chapel Hill. Everyone knew each other and they’re running around and it was so much fun. I stayed over, and we went to this party and there was this cool, not-having-parents-around college feeling. It was great; it felt like summer camp. As college does when you first go to it." That fun with her friends still fresh in her mind when her parents drove Dollar from her home in North Carolina to her new dorm building in Massachusetts the following week, the actress wondered if she’d made a hasty mistake. "Boston was such a big city to me, and when my parents drove away, I was scared," Dollar admits. "I was sitting in my dorm room and I was even scared to go outside and get dinner somewhere! My roommate wasn’t there yet, and I didn’t know anyone. All the kids around looked like they were from Manhattan. They all looked like such city kids to me, and I was totally this little Southern girl, pearls and all that. I remember thinking, ‘Why in the hell did I decide to go to school in Boston? I’m all alone, my parents have left, I’m in a strange city, and I don’t know anyone. This really sucks!’" No Regrets Soon enough, though, Dollar found her niche in Beantown and quickly became adjusted to her own campus life. But just like how she felt she got all that she could out of Raleigh, two years into her Boston University education Dollar decided to go for broke and pursue acting full-time in New York City. "I learned so much while I was there, but I really wanted to try ‘to do it.’ I think that every person has his or her own path. And I made the right decision, for me, to leave school." — Michelle Ann Moro