There is something deeply human about huddling around a light and telling a story. When I was a child, I remember how my family would gather after a long day of work and school and watch a movie. I remember Sunday mornings where we would watch Law and Order or catch up on Star Trek. I remember campfire stories. All of those enraptured faces staring at me as I conjured the tales of the needle-handed man and of the lamplight monster. I think that was what captured me as a child – not the stories themselves, but the faces of those that enjoyed them. To be able to invoke that childlike excitement out of people like my dad, to be able to bring some catharsis or levity into people’s lives – that’s something I desperately wanted for myself, and that desire stuck with me throughout my childhood.
While I began my journey at UGA with several academic aspirations, my heart could never quite let go of that childhood want. I had also come to realize by that point just how vital narrative is to us as human beings. Even something as mundane as a company email has to have a purpose ascribed to it, a purpose which the course of the email is set to fulfill through a build-up and then resolution. Our sense of history, our beliefs about society, our understanding about why we exist, is built on the back of narratives. To be a storyteller was to act a guide, counselor, and entertainer. I knew that I wanted to assume these roles, but to master the skills within them.
I sought to learn from those that came before me, to be able to understand previous writing traditions and dissect the forms within them. My goal was to use that knowledge to improve my own work; however, I knew that knowledge alone wasn’t substantial enough. I also knew that I had the opportunity to become a capable storyteller in a multitude of media fields, and so I took advantage of the Writing Certificate Program to develop those and adapt those storytelling skills in the medium of short stories, poetry, theater, and radio, film, and television. Through those courses, I learned story structure, script formatting, how to write for a specific time frame, how to incorporate digital mediums into my work, and how to effectively utilize my style and syntax.
This is my story. It’s a story that spans across two majors, a minor, and many, many years to come.