Lessons Learned

One of the things I make my production students do is send me a lessons learned document after every project. When I did this at the doc institute I would just have them make a bullet list. And also we'd sit in a circle and debrief based off those lists. That works better with grad students than undergrads. When I asked these kids to share what they've learned so that people who hadn't gone yet could avoid making the same mistakes all I got was crickets. I had to sit there silently for 2 minutes before anyone would offer something. But I still make them write something.

So because I think self-assessment is a useful thing, here are my lessons learned from my first semester on the tenure track:

Oscar Shorts

Last night I went to a screening of the Oscar nominated shorts. It was almost a private screening. A couple showed up toward the end of the first one, stayed for the second one, and left at the start of the third one. I think they just wanted to see Martin Freeman. I wanted to see the best of the genre, the thing I should be aspiring for. Here's what I learned: Even the best shorts are sometimes too long.

The TA's role as mentor

I often talk about the stories we tell and how disappointed I am with the stories Hollywood chooses to tell, and the lack of women and women's voices in the stories coming out of the media industry. The thing is I don't think I'm going to storm Hollywood and change the industry. But what I can do is be a mentor to the next generation of storytellers. That's part of why I want to teach, and what I enjoy about teaching. However, I don't have to wait for that elusive professor job because right now I am a TA and even when not, I'm a grad student in with a bunch of undergrads.

Lessons Learned

With my client last week we interviewed kids who had done oral histories as part of a class in the local community college. This is what one of them said he learned:

Glorious Failures

"You will learn more from a glorious failure than you ever will from something you never finished."
- Neil Gaiman
As found here.

What wonderful advice that is.