Being A Film Student Should Be Easier

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.