On the Brink
Film & Videojournalism
(Capstone Project)
For this project, I interviewed nine students from a variety of majors and backgrounds about their educational interests and future career plans. These interviews were each edited into 1-2 minute videos and featured on YouTube. Additionally, several of these videos were used in a short documentary, alongside interviews from faculty and professionals currently working in their prospective career fields.
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Through secondary research, I examined the factors that commonly contribute to career success for recent college graduates. Broadly speaking, I noticed three recurring themes: (1) inherent personal strengths, (2) quality of education, and (3) professional identity.
Trey Farley
“Growing up, I actually did want to be a sportscaster… and then for some reason, in high school, I thought that I needed to be a doctor and came to college wanting to be a doctor. After one year, I realized that I was in the wrong major. So I switched back to the original idea, which was broadcasting, and so far I haven’t turned around.”
Mark Bao
“I feel like music can make people have positive thinking. After I came to the US, I just felt like, wow, music is the same language for people – no matter where people come from. When I was a freshman, my English was not that good, but we could still communicate with each other through music.”
Laken Lyon
“There’s a lot of things about art that I find inspiring… It’s always been an important part of history and who we are. It’s also very subjective. It doesn’t matter if you’ve had three years of training, four years, or you’ve just picked up a pen yesterday… And it’s everywhere. There’s not a place in the world that doesn’t experience art in their everyday life.”
Angelo Leitner-Wise
“Pushing through the challenges that you find at practice really makes your everyday challenges not seem as impossible to overcome.”
Derrell Anderson
“In my future, I want to work with InterVarsity as a staff worker – to work on different campuses and tell them about the good news of Jesus. To just help them become more of who they were meant to be… My heart is just for people and for ministry.”
Erika Massie
"What inspires me is kind of teaching someone a lesson that they didn't know and... putting a smile on people's faces while doing it."
Aaron Smith
“The thing I find inspiring about the petroleum industry is the fact that the industry really rewards hard work. If you put yourself into a project and work really hard on it, then you’ll reap the benefits. You’ll get a massive amount of satisfaction.”
Emily Peters
“Volleyball, for me, is just like a release… You can lay it all out on the court and it just melts your troubles away for at least a few hours while you're practicing or playing.”
Paul Bieniek
“I think we live in a great country… there are still a lot of things that could be better. Politics is a way that you can try to change things for the better.”
Click PDF link to
read my paper
