Graduate Admissions | Marginalia

What’s new, Year 2?

Hey all! The best cohort around is back, back, back again!

Back to Life, Back to Reality

Are y’all ready for the back-to-school bonanza?? I sure hope so, because I’m not entirely convinced that I am. Excited? Totally! Ready? Absolutely not.

Happy August, all! Even though I’m a Leo baby, August really snuck up on me this year. In a month, my internship with Steppenwolf will be over. I’ll be back in the grind of school and on the road to graduation. And with the internship coming to a close, I am increasingly thankful that this experience at Steppenwolf worked out. Intern life has been a major shift away from the life of a first year grad student, but I’m just now finally getting to dive into how and why it feels like I’ve stepped out of the safety net of school and into the real world.

Everything is Creative

As a creative producer, getting to come up with ideas, develop stories and work on scripts is my heart and joy. I love it. Another big part of being a creative producer is logistics, which is often not as fun as scripts and stories. Most of the logistical work ultimately gets done by the line producer, production manager, and assistant directors, who are hired by and work with the producer to make sure the production happens as hitch-free as possible. A lot of the time, those jobs are considered non-creative, but I beg to disagree. There is creativity involved in logistics, especially with low-budget filmmaking.

New Blogger, Who Dis?

As we say so long to the one and only Kelly Schmader, I wanted to take a moment to say a quick hello! The metaphorical torch of Graduate Ambassador-ship has been passed from Kelly to me. I am currently in the summer between years one and two in the Masters of Arts Management program at Columbia. Grad school—specifically the MAM program—has been a whirlwind thus far. Tons of reading. Lots of writing. Many, many new friends. And a love affair with the city of Chicago. I will for sure dive into more detail about all of these things at some point over the next year, but for now—a few basics!

Summer Working

Summer break is in full swing, and school is done. What’s not done is the creative work. That never stops. School or no school, there are still stories to develop, scripts to write, films to produce and footage to edit. The difference that arises with getting all of that done during the summer is routine. During the school year, you have a bit of structure: you know where you’ll be and how much free time you’ll have, so you can figure out when and where you will write or edit or have meetings. In the summer, you have the freedom to figure that out on your own terms.

So Long, Farewell…

Cue up the graduation music, pop off the streamers, and light the fireworks…because it’s time for me to GRADUATE! Wow, has it been one hell of a ride! The last three years of my life have been full of learning about my craft and myself. I have grown in so many ways…I appreciate my life so much. I don’t even feel sad about graduating, unlike when I received my undergraduate degree and then wept all that night.

Hasta la Vista Baby

Before the world knew Dear Sugar was Cheryl Strayed, a 22-year-old advice seeker wrote to her and asked “What would you tell your 22-year-old self as a woman in her 40’s?” Strayed’s answer was as heartbreaking as it was beautiful, and it’s a piece of writing I return to often in my life, a kind of sacred text that fills me with a sense of belonging, and most importantly, helps me sit with myself in times of need.