Jesse GrothOlson
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Being A Film Student Should Be Easier

5/10/2017

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I’ve recently described “film school” to my students as a story incubator. There are incubators for startup businesses, where young entrepreneurs can receive experienced guidance, mature instruction, and even investment in a short-term, intensive season in hopes of kick starting a new company. They are also places where entrepreneurs can get networked in with other entrepreneurs to create economic synergistic magic. I really think that film school is that, but for stories and storytellers. Or it can be. Or it should be.
 
All you have to do is go to class, learn new stuff, and try it out by telling stories. I sometimes describe it as reading books, proving you read them, and talking about them. That’s it. That’s your one thing.  All you have to do is try! Have you tried trying? There’s a whole ‘try’ named after you; it’s, ‘The Ol’ College Try.” You have no job, no mortgage, no families, no responsibilities, no…
 
WAIT, wait, wait, wait, wait…that’s not entirely true either.
 
Most students depend on good grades to keep scholarships. And while a letter grade is supposedly an indicator of how well a student has proven mastery of a subject, it usually (largely thanks to No Child Left Behind) is more of an indicator of how well they can game a system or simply parrot instructions. So, we can’t really trust them, but we’ve tied real monies to them, so they actually send students’ blood pressures through the roof. And really, what we’re asking when we assign this industrialized denominator of quality is whether a student was good enough. However, grades are used to prove excellence way more infrequently than they are used to prove that someone, while inadequate, was adequately inadequate. And so they desperately grovel with genuine fear in their eyes when they ask what they need to do to get an “A.”
 
Who cares? Did you learn the content? Isn’t THAT why you’re here? To learn stuff?
 
And then MANY of them have jobs. Usually they are crappy jobs that you can have without a diploma, and they have managers that don’t understand what it means to be a full-time student. They lustily dream of the day when all they have is a job instead of a job and school. Some of them get sports scholarships, which is the worst kind of job. It’s a job that, if you’re good enough, pays really well, but it also demands a lot of you. LOTS of time when you’re in season, and only slightly less when you’re out. It demands of your body. I have one student who is fighting major foot problems so that they can keep their scholarship long enough to get through school. That’s something they’ll carry the rest of their lives. Then there are the coaches who demand that the student focus 100% on their sport instead of their studies…at school. I’ll discuss the irony of that with a coach some day. So, they desperately wrangle their academic schedule around their financial needs with fear in their eyes when they come in for advising.
 
Calm down. We’ll make your schedule work. I know it’s expensive and crazy stressful, but we’ll walk through it with you.
 
And then a lot of my students do have families. One has three full-grown kids, and is coming back to school now that the nest is empty. One has 5 kids and a stay-at-home spouse. Two are single moms, with full time jobs and very little outside help. A few even start their families while in school. The rest, even if they don’t have their own nuclear families, have their immediate families, and they can be the worst of all. SOOOO many parents will hold their children under their thumbs. “You’ll take this major, or else…” “You’ll live with us, or else...” “You can’t have your own iTunes account, or else…” I’ve had a student be told by their parents that they either need to go into business or politics. That’s it. Right, because the only way to ever make money is to literally have the word, “Business,” on your diploma. With parents like that it’d be easier to just have a mortgage. These are fully-grown adults under the law. I think if we started treating them like adults, they’d start acting like adults. They desperately juggle the needs of their professors, their studies, their peers, and the families that they love so dearly—you know, the entire reason they’re doing this in the first place!
 
I get it. Do what you have to do to keep all the plates spinning.
 
Which leads to them really putting themselves through the ringer. Not a lot of sleep is had. There are similar levels caffeine dependence here as there are on most Hollywood sets. Then you force them to buy a meal plan at a place that serves primarily carbohydrates, and squeeze them until they stress eat their way into the Freshman Fifteen. Some students need to be told to get off their lazy asses and do something, but even more need to be told to take it easy. Just do a few things well. Figure out what’s more important for you to learn, and focus your “A” energy on that. C’s get degrees. Congrats, you graduated top of your bell-curve.
 
AND THEY SOMEHOW SURVIVED!
 
But then they lose money. I get it. I’m sorry. Just do what you can.
 
So, while I dream of the day when film school can be a story incubator, I don’t think that day is here yet. I get excited when, with each successive year, students are asking better questions. They care more about how what they’re learning will carry them into their futures. They’re rejecting disconnected, standardized, groupthink philosophies of education, and are more interested in making connections and receiving personalized education. As a society, we still rest on institutions instead of individuals, but kids are starting to question that.
 
If we treated college more like a trade school, but included art, philosophy, and history it’d be more like what is actually needed to stir the minds of the future culture makers. Maybe if it was a flat fee, no gimmicks, and only happened at night, we could support not just the recent high school grads, but we could also help out those who are in need of a mid-career shift. We could help those individuals running the high school media program they were put in charge of with no training or experience. Maybe if people cared less about accreditation (which is as inane as grades, but 10 times more arbitrary) and more about actually being able to prove mastery in a field, then we could have learning institutions that equipped people to be life-long learners instead of life-long debtors. We’d be the story incubator I dream of. If students discipled under a professor instead of filled a required seat number, then our stories would get better. If our stories go better, then our culture would become more holistic. And if that were the case, we’d have fewer sociopolitical rifts. We’d be engaged in wiser conversation. We’d have better collaboration throughout society. We’d have fewer freakin’ film remakes of older TV shows!!!!
 
And maybe that’ll be possible some day.  But until then, I’m going to do what I can to try to carve that out of the current system. So, being a film student isn’t easy, but I understand. I will push you to be the best, and I will match your effort stride for stride.

​Mostly because I want to be told better stories.

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A Silent, Meaningless Burial

5/6/2017

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Wednesday was a great day. I got some really great news at work, I got to have a year-end celebration with some of my favorite students, and then I got to be on one film set as an actor, and then another as a collaborator. Pretty great, right? I mean, big picture, most days are just mundane. Any ONE of those things would have made for a great day. Satisfaction guaranteed…
 
…yea…guaranteed.
 
Wednesday was also this: I didn’t get to see my kids. That sucks. While parenting is a real time warp where the days seem to never end but the years fly by, I genuinely don’t like when I feel like a figure that simply passes through their days sporadically. I don’t know if they see me like this, but I definitely feel like I see them twice a day in passing, giving light reprimands when they are required, but I’m basically an authority figure who makes them feel safe in short bursts. I feel like a live-in crossing guard.
 
Wednesday was also this: I was able to serve my wife by picking up our monthly glut of coconut milk that we get from the Asian market that’s on my way home, and we coordinated schedules regarding my visit to the chiropractor. We communicated details about upcoming events, relayed information regarding her degrading health, and I (probably insufficiently) expressed sincere sympathy for how hard it is for her to still run the home in her condition. It’s just where we are in life right now. Through no fault of her own, I sometimes feel like a live-in personal assistant.
 
Wednesday was also this: I had to hurry home to “take care” of a dead bird.
 
I had recently trimmed our tree in the front yard, and doing so had exposed years of overgrowth. The tree hadn’t been taken care of properly, so I’d slowly hacked back the branches that were choking each other out. Also—and I’m not your stereotypical lawn nut, but I’m starting to see how those guys get that way—the tree was killing my grass. Lawns are the final point of competition with nature for suburban middle class men, and I’m losing it badly. So, I trimmed the tree! And that exposed a dove’s nest. Which was made unstable by my horticultural hack-job. Which, during the rain storm that night, dumped a poor baby dove to the ground.
 
Ginny and the boys had seen it and wanted to do something about it. She knew you typically aren’t supposed to touch wild animals because it could lead to the parent smelling human and refusing to care for the baby any more. She called a bird rescue hotline, and was basically given a tongue lashing for trimming the tree and a lecture about how the number she looked up online was the incorrect number. She should have looked up the correct one online. Good call, government employee. Good call. The boys prayed for the bird, and went to bed.
 
She ended up calling me late last night to ask if I could bury the dead baby bird so the boys didn’t see it in the morning.
 
Crossing-guard-personal-assistant-guy to the rescue!
 
Now, there’s a lot going on here. I’d been at work overseeing a student film shoot, so I didn’t even get home until 1 AM. I need to take care of the litter box and take care of this bird, so I don’t exactly want to dilly dally. I get a spade from the garage and head out. Then I go back and get a flashlight because I don’t want to accidentally step on this bird’s carcass. That’d wreck my shoes, my day, and, frankly, this bird has had a bad enough day as it was. I’m lighting each individual step so as not to create dove pâté. I find the bird. Super dead.
 
Ok, now where to plant this poor sucker. As I’m hastily digging a shallow grave in my front yard flowerbed in the dark in the middle of the night, I get this subtle, inescapable feeling that I’m committing a crime. I mean, who else digs shallow graves in the dark at 1AM? Hand-rubbing, mask-wearing, evil-eyed criminals, that’s who! I go over to scoop up the poor little dove, and the wet, matted feathers, the tiny beak, and the delicate claws all look so…pathetic. It’s SO dead! No mother dove is hanging around mourning the dead baby. No news truck pulls up. Heck, my kids won’t even know this happened. He’ll simply be…gone. I flop the limp body into the dirt with a moist thump. Two scrapes of dirt over it, and then I stomp it down with my foot.
 
That’s when it hits me. As I pull my foot back from the dirt to reveal the waffled shoeprint on the crappy, silty swamp-dirt that is this impromptu burial plot I think, “Aren’t two sparrows sold for only a penny? But your Father knows when any one of them falls to the ground. Even the hairs on your head are counted. So don’t be afraid! You are worth much more than many sparrows.”
 
Wow. Well, I would certainly hope so.
 
Here lies the rotted, pathetic carcass of a poor creature with no marker to remember it by. It made very little impact on the world, and in just a few minutes it will be completely forgotten. In fact, that’s entirely the point of the unceremonious ceremony I’m taking part in…to help my kids forget it ever was. It will be like it never existed.
 
And that is exactly what happens to us.
 
Well, not exactly, but close enough. I’ll be buried a little deeper and, hopefully, not so late at night. But we create ceremonies, monuments carved of stone, and even family lines to try to not be forgotten. We want to mean something. We want to have made an impact. But, honestly, when all is said and done, I’ll end up exactly like that poor little bird. Another image that flashes before me in that moment is of some of the tomb stones we’d seen in Ireland when Ginny and I traveled there years ago. Memorials designed to create legacy, now too weathered to even read, lean haphazardly or are obscured by wild growth. No one remembers those people. It’s like they never existed.
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So, there I stand semi-covertly on my dying lawn—shovel in one hand and flashlight in the other—contemplating my own meaningless mortality and inane legacy. How does anyone move forward knowing that at some point, probably sooner rather than later, we will receive a cosmic foot-stomp in a too-shallow hole where our wet pathetic carcass will slowly turn into swamp dirt? Luckily, I’m worth more than a lot of sparrows.
 
God loves me, and has a relationship with me. He doesn’t promise a great life. He doesn’t promise an eternal legacy. He doesn’t promise ease, comfort, happiness, or wealth either, and anyone who tells you otherwise hasn’t yet had to bury a dead infant dove. He does promise hope for today, but paradise in an eternity somewhere else. Life isn’t meaningless, but once it’s done it’s done. He whispered to my soul right there, “So don’t worry about it.”
 
He’s right, you know. We will all die, and we will be forgotten so we should stop trying to live like we won’t. You have people in your life right now who want you to be more than a crossing guard or a personal assistant. The inevitable doesn’t require anything from you, but the present does. You will have what is, in the big picture of the universe, a silent, meaningless burial, so you might as well have a great day today. There should be a fantastic release from your present troubles if you can actually embrace the smallness of your role in the cosmos and the largeness of your role in the lives of the people around you. Very few people lay on their deathbeds wishing they'd spent more time at work.
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Charles Leonard GrothOlson

5/2/2017

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A woman’s work is never done, and once a mom, always a mom. But a father’s job has a beginning, and an end, and we do everything we can in that middle part to make our sons good men.
 
I don’t remember being born, and for that both my mother and I are truly grateful. But I do know that I was born to a man who very often felt like he was in over his head. And I think if we were all being honest, that’s how every man feels when his role as a father is beginning. He grew into it, though. With my Dad, we always knew right where the line was, and we had complete freedom right up to it. And when we crossed the line, his justice was swift and thorough. But he did it out of love. He was really a gentle giant. He was a 6 foot 275 pound introvert. He was a pastor, and unlike pastors you see on TV, he was smart, good, honest, and he loved people so hard that it healed them.
 
But things weren’t always good between us. In my mind he became a real self-centered, ignorant, tyrant the year I turned 14. By the time I turned 18 and went to college he actually—again, in my opinion—got a little smarter. Then when I went away to graduate school and studied the arts (with his full, but non-financial support) he got really smart. We had great talks about humanity, and audiences, and how to honestly reach people effectively. Then when I got married he got a little insecure and immature, which was really weird to me because he had JUST gotten so smart again! And it’s really weird the moment you realize that in your relationship with your father there are times that YOU are the adult! And your justice has to be swift and thorough. But even in all of that middle part he was doing everything he could to make me into a good man.
 
By this time my wife and I were living in California, and my parents were in the Central Time Zone, so I would pretty regularly get phone calls from my well-intentioned yet forgetful mom at 6 o’clock in the morning. I’d answer, “Hello?” and she would THEN remember that we were two hours behind and say, “Oooooooh, sorry, sorry, sorry! Go back to sleep! I’m so sorry!” And then one day, she called at 4 am. And I already knew it wasn’t good. I picked up, and in a very flat and tone she kept emotionless so she could hold it together she said, “You father has collapsed in the bathroom. The ambulance is here now. They’re taking him to the hospital.” I was 25, he was 55. A few hours pass, I’m crying, my wife is holding me…my mom calls again. The same flat tone, “He’s had an aneurysm. They say they’ve never seen one this big before and he needs to be airlifted. What do we do?” Wait, you’re asking me? I’m not ready for this. I can’t make that decision. But here’s my mom looking to me to do that very thing. “I say we give him every chance we can.”
 
They airlifted him, he has brain surgery, he’s not waking up, and he’s not breathing on his own. I’m drowning in my own emotion. But my Dad had done everything he could in this middle part to make his sons good men. My two brothers and I fly out. The night I got there, my mom is in his room. It’s dark, it’s quiet, and it’s really, really cold. She’s whispering to me that when a blood vessel bursts in the brain, blood covers the brain cells and kills them. Then in order to repair the brain the body pumps the cranial cavity full of white blood cells to help heal it. The cold, the quiet, the hole drilled in his skull to let fluids escape, and a strict lack of physical contact is to minimize the brain’s responses to stimuli so it can focus solely on healing. She says, “I just want to crawl up there with him, and hold him, and tell him it’s going to be ok, but this is all I’m allowed to do,” and she kneels down next to the bed reaches out with one finger, and barely touches his hand…and she cries.
 
One of my brothers was in the Navy, so we only had a few days to do whatever it was we were going to do. My my mom and my two brothers and I sat down with the neurosurgeon, who explained that his brain was continuing to swell due to the extent of the damage, and that no matter what they did … he was going to die. We could ride it out or take him off life support. My mom and both of my brothers—both good men—turned and looked at me?
 
On July 16, 2006 we all came into his room, took some pictures, said our goodbyes, took out his breathing tube, and watched him choke to death.
 
We had to rush everything to get my brother back to the Navy in time. We were meeting with the funeral director across from St. Luke's Episcopal Church where we were going to bury him. The cheapest and fastest way was to cremate him. The dear, sweet funeral director was walking us through what the process was going to be. His body would be burned, but the bones wouldn’t, so those would be ground up. “He’ll come in a bag, about this big,” he says holding up his hands to indicate something exactly the size of a breadbox. And all four of us started to laugh. My dad was a fat man! I said, “That’s it? Won’t there be a candle or a bar of soap or something too?” This is how we dealt with stress. I still do.
 
He was eulogized by my brother, he was buried, and then somehow…inexplicably…life went on. Without him. His job was done.
 
And then, one day, my job as a father started. On our 5th anniversary, my wife woke me up by telling me that she was pregnant. I was shocked, I was scared, and I was really sad because this child would never know his grandfather. He'd know his other grandfather well, but not my dad. But I knew that I had to do everything I could in this new middle part to make my son a good man. All my dad-friends kept telling me about how amazing it is to hold your son for the first time and to feel the instantaneous elation and connection and love that ran unfathomably deep. Yes, from time to time, and with a beer in hand, men do talk about their feelings.
 
The day came. Contractions were had. My wife labored for 30 hours and pushed in active labor for 8. She was a warrior. And I was going to take my role by the horns just like she did. I was going to be a good dad just like my dad was. I helped pull my son into the world. I cut his umbilical cord, and I wrapped him in a towel, held him on my chest, and I looked in his deep eyes--anticipating that instantaneous and unfathomable connection--and I thought... “’Sup?” I had no idea who this dude was. He looked all pink and squinty, and he was covered with snot. We took him home, and he pooped on everything I owned. He would scream so loud through my face that my teeth would ache. He took complete ownership of my favorite of my wife’s parts, and he made me sleep on the couch. He was the worst roommate I’d ever had.
 
And I didn’t feel that instant connection. I thought I was broken some how. I wasn’t a good dad somehow. And it took me a long time. I hadn’t had those 9 months of being connected to him. I didn’t know what movies he liked, what music he liked, or his favorite beer. I didn’t know who he was.
 
But in time, as I did get to know him, and as I saw him learn all about the world by putting it in his mouth, I came to love him deeply. More than my self. I gave up sleep, the comfort of a bed, every preference I ever had about how our house was run, all my money, time, and all my everything. I very often felt like I was in way over my head, but my job had begun. He was my son.
 
Eventually my wife said she was ready for another. I’m thinking, “Are you sure that’s such a good idea? I don’t know how much you remember, but I was at ground zero. And now you want more? Of that? Again?” I was nervous. I didn’t want to feel like my emotions part was broken again. By now, my first son was also interested in what was going on with the baby inside Mommy’s tummy. He was smart, and curious, and had tons of questions. We told him everything that was appropriate for a 3 ½ year old to know. He was looking at pictures in maternity magazines and was fascinated by fetal development. He wanted to meet his brother so badly, and that just made it worse for me. I wasn’t even as excited as he was. Because, see, I remembered the pooping, and the screaming, and the pooping, and the not sleeping, and the pooping, and the vomiting, and…the pooping. I remembered holding him in my arms and wondering if I was broken for not feeling that instantaneous elation and connection and love that ran unfathomably deep.
 
The day came. Contractions were had. My wife labored for many less hours and pushed in active labor for only a few. She was, again, a warrior. And I was going to take my role by the horns just like she did? I was going to be a good dad just like my dad was. I helped pull my son into the world. I cut his umbilical cord, and I wrapped him in a towel, held him on my chest, and thought, “This is my son!” And I felt...that instantaneous elation and connection and love that runs unfathomably deep. A woman’s work is never done, and once a mom, always a mom. But my job had a beginning, and it will have an end, but I will do everything I can in that middle part to make my sons good men.

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Writing is hard

5/2/2017

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I'm not a writer. I'm just not. I always hear about "the greats," and the kind of discipline they show is astounding. I don't have it! I'm not one! I write when the muse beckons, and then I just don't. Anyone can do that!

That said, I have won local awards for my writing. One of my best friends in the whole world once said, and I quote, "Man, you REALLY have a way with words." (Emphasis his) That struck me. I kind of do. I've known that, but I've only ever been good in person. Never in writing.

Now, if one of my students came and told me that, what would I say? I'd say something like, "Nonsense. You do have a way with words, and you're ripping the rest of us off by not doing something about it," or, "Oh, really? Have you actually tried?" And then they'd say something that I'd probably generally ignore, and then I'd say something like, "Listen, whether you believe in you or not...I do. Please, don't let this gift slip away." Not that. Like that, but not that.

So, I should. I should write. I will try. I can't say it'll be good (of course it won't, but each time I do it'll suck a little bit less), and I can't promise that I'll be consistent. I do, however, owe it to myself to try. 

And so I will.

​I suggest you do the same.
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    Jesse is a professor at Houston Baptist University. He also directs the school's theatre club, does handyman projects on the side, and produces features and short films. A Pastor's kid/missionary kid, his view of life is at the very least unique. And hopefully helpful. 

    Otherwise, why blog?

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