Student Blogger: Aubrey Donovan

As noted in my previous blog, I am taking a semester off— living at home, working, and taking enough online classes to maintain the required credit count for a scholarship. The classes I am taking this semester are all within my current decided major– film production.

It is easier to get caught in the rat race than to fear it. Getting ahead is a good thing, but before you do the ‘what,’ it is good to know the ‘why.’

After my first year of college, this summer has been reflective and has made me look back at my year and consider my emotions as well as my wants and needs. Getting out of college I felt so relieved to be back at home, to have some sense of familiarity back in my life after facing change after change for the past nine months. 

Instead of heading straight for “1, 2, 3. Eyes on me,” I decided that we were going to try to be a bit more creative. I was going to remix Jonathan Larson’s “Boho Days.”

As you get older, you begin to lose that childish part of yourself that made you feel so sure of who you are and you look for pieces to replace it. You are exposed to new emotions you never had to confront, emotions your parents never thought you’d confront. Emotions that boil at the surface and splash and burn everyone around you. But you don’t know how to handle it, you can’t find the knob to turn down the heat and reduce to a simmer.

With the ability to auto-generate essays and access Google, Sparknotes, and Photomath, it is easy to abuse the moral code of academic integrity. But while these online sources may make completing homework “easier,” using them does not produce the same profitable outcome as manually doing one's homework.

My first year of college is over and for some reason, nothing seems to have changed. I’m still lost on where my life is going, let alone where the next year is going, and I still feel like I’m just laying in post-high school degree limbo. I’m still trying to find the right school and I’m still trying to accept the change that was solidified when I moved my tassel.

But twenty is just a number… a larger, older number. A number that marks that a person has had two decades of life experience. You’d think that would actually mean something.

The title of this blog embodies how I felt after I exited the theater of my high school’s spring musical. And just to be clear, this feeling was not conjured due to the performance but from the inevitable comparison of the past and the alienation the title ‘alumnus’ brings.

If you want to be a writer, you need to be writing. If you want to be a filmmaker, you need to be making films. You should be reading the classics, you should be watching the classics. These are all pieces of 'advice' that I've had thrown at me. Things I need to add to my to-do list. Yet, the advice-givers forget that there are only 24 hours in a day.

I've always been a pretty organized person. Ever since I had to switch out of advanced math in the 6th-grade mid-semester I've made sure to keep track of my homework, test schedule, and extracurricular activities. After this math class incident, I started to write my homework to-do list on my hand so I would not forget it. However, this wasn't the most efficient way of doing things since yesterday's homework may not wash away enough to make room for today's.

As noted in my previous blog post, this semester I am taking two creative writing courses. Within each course, we are expected to write pieces of our own and share them with the class to receive suggestions and critiques. In any medium of art or any type of work that requires one's time and effort, criticism is hard to take.

After having nearly a month off from school, the taste of summer felt oh so near- not just because I spent my winter break soaking up Australia's summer- but especially since I was able to enjoy quality time with my family and catch up with some high school friends. To be at ease and have a clear mind, unclouded by what is behind and ahead of me felt so refreshing. However, this taste of summer was short-lived and semester two came faster than anticipated.