THE MORE THE MERRIER

I got my first job right out of high school. My photojournalism teacher had a photography and printing business and brought me on as a graphic designer the summer after graduation. My job mostly consisted of designing pages for football programs. You know, yoked out football players drenched in gatorade sweat and lightning bolts – that kind of thing. I worked there for 10 months, got paid $10 per page as a contractor during football program season, then minimum wage the rest of the year (which in 2007 was $6.25, only a dollar less than it is today, 18 years later). 

I worked my next two jobs while I was taking a semester off from college. The first, a Kitchen Designer/Sales Associate gig at Home Depot in Weslaco, paid $9 an hour, and I hated every second of it. I took long lunches, slacked off, and complained so much that after just two weeks, I was asked to resign. My next job was a seasonal Best Buy gig working in the “Digital Imaging” department, this was where they kept all the cameras at the time. I don’t know what it’s called today, but I hated this job too! I’d have a great conversation with a customer one moment and get in trouble for not turning it into a sale the next. One day, I told my supervisor that it didn’t feel right to manipulate people into spending money, that it felt heartless. To this, my boss replied “well if you want to work in sales, you can’t have a heart”. I’ll never forget that. To no one’s surprise, I was not called back after the season ended. Funnily enough, however, one of those sale-less customer interactions ended up getting me back in school. 

You see, I was taking a semester off from school because I was depressed. I’d really wanted to study film at NYU (because Tunde Adebimpe, the singer of TV On The Radio, studied film there and I wanted to be a cool musician/filmmaker like him) but I didn’t get into their film program. Then I tried applying to Full Sail in Orlando, because they had a 21-month Film program that seemed legit (though I’d learn later it wasn’t), but my folks couldn’t afford to pay my tuition, nor were they in any place to co-sign on loans with me, so I ended up enrolling at what would eventually become UTRGV, then known as UTPA. As a young person with a fairly negative opinion of the Valley (see: “nothing cool ever happens here”), staying here felt a lot like “settling”. It felt like failure. I did one semester as a Communications major (closest thing to being a film student) and was immediately put off by the department’s integration of Film, Television, and Theater, so the following semester I switched my major to Art. I’d been drawing all my life, so I thought it could work as a backup. As luck would have it, I ended up hating my Drawing professor – a man more concerned with the way I held a pencil than what I created with it. After a few weeks, I stopped going to his class. Eventually I started skipping all my classes, wasting the money my parents paid for my tuition and absolutely burying my GPA in the process. It seemed like all I could do was fail. I’d already failed as an artist, and was now failing as a student. Once I picked up the retail jobs I failed as an employee, too. Twice. Despite being 19 years old and not having much life experience to speak of, I was convinced my life was over. Truly convinced, if you catch my drift.

But then I remembered a conversation I had at work with a man I recognized from my time at UTPA. His name was Mike Salazar, and he was in charge of the workshop where all of the theater productions’ sets were built. On campus, he was a man of few words, but while helping him find some products at Best Buy, he recognized me and asked where I’d been the last couple semesters. I told him about my journey and dissatisfaction with the program, and he heard me out. He said he understood my frustrations, and admitted that the program was limited in resources. But he also said that, despite its shortcomings, the Theater/TV/Film program at UTPA was a good starting point for someone wanting to pursue any of those fields further. He spoke highly of the staff and of the supportive environment the program fostered for students with big ambitions. Up until that point, I’d seen college as a one-stop shop for anything and everything I’d want to know and do in the world. I expected to receive a Matrix-style download of knowledge and experience that would get me a job the second I graduated. I never considered that college would simply be one step in a journey with many steps, and that taking one step forward meant I was one step closer to where I wanted to be. Talking to Mike gave me perspective, and not only made me feel like there were more pages left in my story, it made me want to turn them over and see what they had to offer. That Spring, I re-enrolled at UTPA, in the Theater/TV/Film department, and tackled the semester with a renewed sense of purpose. I found ways to express myself in my work and met people who inspired me, people who fueled the fire at the center of my heart. I learned that in order to be a dreamer, you have to be a lifelong learner, too. 

This is what has guided me everywhere I’ve been in my life, for better or worse. Some lessons are easier to learn than others, of course, but I’ve found that the harder a lesson is to learn, the more important it tends to be. This year was a hard one. No doubt about it. But I’m grateful for it just the same. Steps, pages, lessons…whatever you wanna call ‘em, the more the merrier. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

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