Intellectual Bio

My interest in media studies can be expressed as a binary of social mechanisms. One mechanism being simply human interaction; as long as I can remember, I have gaged my life success on the depth and variety of my communication with others. The other aspect that ropes me in is the advances in technology that not only allow us to bring far off values and ideas into our homes, but also have begun to morph into a living thing that repeatedly defines us through the permeation of mainstream standards. Using our technology, I hope to explore and document differing cultures throughout the world, or at least a alternate option that makes me feel connected or like I’m making an eye-opening contribution. I feel like in America people can get so entangled in their own lives and forget about the rest of the world. We need to step outside the Order that rules our lives every once and a while, and see things from another perspective.
This earliest memory I have was an instance of me just wanting to be around people and experience the world with them. Unfortunately, those people happened to be my older brother, Nick, and his friends when I was 6. I just wanted to join in while they were riding bikes, but at the time, I was bikeless. So it basically turned into a game of chase until my brother, Nick, ran over my leg with his bicycle breaking my tibia in two places. I cried until my mom came out and picked me up off the ground. While balling my eyes out, I just kept saying the same thing over and over again: “I just wanted to play.” I suppose all kids just want to play, but I had some sort of obsession with always being around people and listening to any stories anyone would be willing to tell me. I don’t remember seeing Nick while I was at the hospital, but apparently he felt really bad about the whole thing. After this incident, my brother and I were no longer close. My mom thought it was dangerous for me to hang out with the big kids, and I guess Nick was tired of having his little brother tag along.
My family moved around a lot while I was growing up. From Louisiana to Michigan to South Carolina to Maryland back to South Carolina to England back to Michigan and finally to Delaware where I started 9th grade. Molly and Nick found it very hard to leave each place; truly, countless tears were shed in the back of my dad’s Subaru van while we drove several hours to our new home. For some reason, I never really minded our family expositions. Excited at the prospect of meeting new people in a new environment, I was usually eager to meet the next bunch of kids that would inevitably judge me by my clothes or the first couple sentences that came out of my mouth. It was also a chance to start over; every place I’ve lived, I’ve been someone different. I’ve been the 4th grade social butterfly who all the little girls fawned over, and I’ve been the quiet 5th grader who hung out with the smelly kid that loved professional wrestling. Taking numerous different perspectives really helps your social analysis skills in the long run. I’m the perennial new kid.
The first place I really felt a strong connection with was Lichfield, England. I only lived there for 2 years (from age 11 to 13), but the friends I made there will last me a lifetime. Now even though we speak the same language as the English, I must say that their lifestyle is so different to ours, especially when you’re 12 years old. First of all, as soon as I arrived at The Friary School I was some sort of celebrity just because I’m American (Lichfield, being the smallest city in England, doesn’t frequently encounter outsiders). And it seemed like everyone wanted to beat me up. Apparently that happens to all the new kids, but it felt like some serious Revolutionary War backlash was going on all around me (mainly because of all the “yank” insults). My second day I was confronted by a kid named Chris Hewkin who threw down the gauntlet to fight in front on a large group of students in the courtyard. This guy was about a foot shorter than me, but I had never been in a fight so I respectfully declined and began to walk away. The courtyard became so silent all of the sudden, as if no one had ever seen a spat end so peacefully; but the silence soon turned to the pitter patter of little feet running fast, and a jump kick to my lower back pumped the crowd up to a roar. Although it doesn’t seem like I won this particular battle, that was the year I signed up for the school’s peer mediation program; I helped settle disputes between students by rationalizing the situation. It was a great skill to learn for future encounters.
Luckily, despite the fact I was under constant attack by kevs (street hooligans) and still awkward with girls, I made some really close friends in my home room class. Matt Hale was the athletic, hilarious, good looking guy that sits right behind me; to this day, he is still my best friend. In the seat next to Matt sits James Lang, a skinny blond kid with a chipped tooth that is often called a “scutter” (meaning his family is somewhat poor) by the other kids. Sitting next to me is quite an eccentric little kid and his overbite is almost uncomfortable to look at; his name is Andrew Bird, but we all called him Birdy. The four of us were practically inseparable for the duration of my stay in the UK.
Most other 12/13 year olds in Lichfield were out vandalizing, scouting for girls, or trying to find alcohol, but we still played like children. I remember we had different bases all around the city; some were hidden and some were in plain site, but all of them had at least one tree we could climb. At our bases we didn’t really conduct any sort of secret business. We basically just climbed trees, watched other people, and talked. Amongst the many topics (favorite candies, what super power would you have, where would you go if you had to leave home, etc.), we often discussed possible future occupations. We were never able to convince James that he couldn’t be a fire truck no matter how badly he wanted to be. Andrew was very into computers and wanted to create video games (which he in fact ended up doing). My choice would change from base to base. I wanted to be a singer, an actor, a lawyer, a doctor, a professional thief, a priest, a psychologist, and the list goes on. Matt always joined in with our fantasy futures and weighed out the pros and cons of each possibility, but he never gave any specific profession that he would like. Occasionally, he would say he wanted to play professional soccer (which he actually could have), but he mainly just said he wanted to work with people. He wanted to help them, learn from them, and understand them. And as vague as that sounds, it really impacted me and changed my perspective from then on.
A lot has happened since then. I moved back to America, lived in Michigan for a year, went to high school and graduated in Delaware, and received my undergraduate degree in four years after attending three universities (Virginia Tech, University of Delaware, and Notre Dame). My media experience up to this point has consisted of recording music on a program called Acid, and in practically any instance in which a teacher would assign a project (in high school or college) I would make a video of some sort. My high school English teacher, Mrs. Kohl, always got a kick out of our videos and encouraged me to keep making them. Another major impact the helped form my ideas about my future was my first Communications class taught by Professor Giglio. When I realized that all the observations I had been making about human interactions over the years were actually an intellectual study, I knew it would be a passion of mine forever. Throughout the course of my college career, my major changed from Communications to English to Film to English/Film. I’m starting to see a pattern with my interests and I believe the media studies program will provide me with the technical tools needed to advance into the realm of intellectual creativity.
After college I didn’t have much of a direction, just an English degree and a few thousand dollars saved up. So I bought a plane ticket to England, stuffed some clothes in a big duffle bag, grabbed my guitar, and headed out with no real agenda whatsoever; with the help of my friends, I was able to book shows at music venues in England, Scotland, France, Spain, and Sweden. I had some great experiences that I’m sure I will tell in another essay, but for my purposes here, I will move on to the real reason I left Europe to come the New York and start my master’s program at The New School.
One Saturday night, I received a video message from my brother; he was drunk and asking me all about my foreign adventures across the pond. Then he talked about his situation; he’s working for Apple and he loves it. He graduated from Notre Dame with a film degree, but he works for 10 dollars an hour at the Mac store and he loves it. He spoke so passionately about wanting to be on the cutting edge of technology and how this is his way of connecting with the world. I remember he drunkenly looked into the camera and said, “I want to be IN the computer!” I laughed for quite a while as I watched it a second time, but then I realized that I wanted to be just as driven as he is. I’m having these great interactions on far off soil and meeting such interesting people, but I saw that I needed some more structure. The next day I booked a flight back to Delaware and as soon as I was home, I applied to a graduate program in New York City at The New School.
August 2nd, 2009 at 10:30 am I found myself in Christiana Hospital standing next to my brother who was bedridden from stage 4 melanoma; I hadn’t been in a hospital with him since he broke my leg. I considered quitting my media studies program before it even started just to spend every moment I could with him. But after only 25 minutes of wiping sweat from his forehead, I watched him leave this place. But he left me with his drive, with his energy. I chose media studies because I like the theoretical break down of how with interact with each other using these different emerging and always changing forms of communication. I also love the opportunity to create, specifically documentary film on foreign cultures. I simply want to experience people, how the live and how it varies from town to city to village to country. And using mass communication, we can open up these other worlds and share these cultural values that are so precious to each community. Nick gave me a kind of ambition that I never thought I could have, and he’s the reason I’m here.