As I was getting ready to fly back home for the long awaited winter break I should’ve been thinking about how I’d finally get to relax, not have to worry about adhering to a school schedule for a while, and not have to keep up with responsibilities for the rest of break. Right? Yeaah that’s not how it went at all. In fact I’d say that my first quarter was more relaxing and less stressful than my entire winter break and the first two weeks of winter quarter. And it’s because of two things: Ambition, and Impatience. My first quarter at UCI was perfectly planned out so that it would ease me into the college lifestyle and ciriculum. I wasn’t in a hurry at the time to rush and figure out exactly what courses I needed to take to plan out a secure path in order to get into the major that I wanted; I still wasn’t sure exactly what major I wanted to go after. I was also too nervous about my first time at UCI to worry about choosing the correct field of study to pursue. I just needed to get a feel for college life first before I went and overwhelmed myself with too many activities. So I kept my first quarter simple. I chose a reasonable schedule only taking four classes that quarter. Monday’s were rough because that’s when I had all four classes and didn’t finish until 6:30pm, but that was the only downside. I joined two clubs, but I wasn’t majorly involved in both of them. I would show up to events majority of the time, but I didn’t look into signing up for club positions, or large events. To say the least, the first quarter wasn’t overwhelming and I was able to handle everything just fine. There was only one problem, however. I didn’t know if it was because I had made my schedule too simple, or if it was something else. I had picked classes that I’d shown an interest in like Korean and Film Analysis, so why didn’t I feel like I was getting anything out of them? I began to feel a little bored with my college life. I felt like I should have been doing something more. And I also wasn’t sure If what I was doing was what I really wanted to continue doing. I liked film, so why did I feel like continuing with film at UCI wouldn’t take me anywhere? (Maybe it’s because I had taken this same film class twice already in highschool lol). I felt like I was wasting my time. I began to get impatient by the end of the quarter. I knew that live action filmmaking wasn’t what I wanted to pursue, but it’s not like the university had an animation department. I was getting ambitious for the next quarter to start already so that I could explore even more classes that could potentially catch my interest and lead me to a career that I’d wanted. The first quarter had gone pretty well right until the very end where things began to feel less like me exploring what I’d like to pursue and instead felt like I was just going through highschool again where nothing really had any meaning, and I was just showing up to class just because. I had that feeling where I was getting tired of being stuck at school all day, and I wanted to just get a job already and get hands on experience. And that’s kind of where my winter break took off. Rather than taking it easy, I began scouting the internet for any internship opportunities that had to do with film or animation. And I also got sidetracked with other sick job opportunities that came knocking at my door. I got an opportunity to audition for the voice of the main character in an indie animation project that I spent my entire break working and obsessing over until I finally submitted it before returning back to school.
I felt like I was actually getting things done over break, and actively working on real industry projects that mattered. Even If I don’t end up securing the role from that audition, the experience was still super valuable and gave me something to build my portfolio off of. Now returning back to UCI for the winter quarter, I found myself in a dilemma. I wasn’t happy with film here, so I had considered going for the game design major, so many of my classes this quarter revolve around game design, but specifically on how to create a game’s rules and mechanics. I didn’t think I’d be particullary interested in the development of the actual gameplay of the game. I had thought that I could take what I know from my film background, like character design, storyboarding, storytelling, sound design, etc. and implement that into game design. To me this seemed logical because I viewed games as just interactive movies, and both mediums share similarities. I play games sure, but I wasn’t as avid a fan like many of my collegues in these classes were, so I felt out of place a bit. I knew way more about film than anything about games, and going from being in a film class, where I pretty much knew more about filmmaking than any of the actual film majors there, to barely understanding the references my table mates make in game design was upsetting. I was in a field I didn’t understand immediately, and that got under my skin. And as I sat there on the first week of the quarter in my first game design class, I thought to myself: “What the heck am I doing here? Why am I even here?” And I just felt lost all over again. The first two weeks went on like this with me being frusterated at everything around me for….what? For things not being exactly the way I want them to be? Probably. A horrible mindset that I realized I needed to get out of, but that usually doesn’t happen until someone else realizes for me and has to have a deep conversation with me about life to get me to realize it too. To distract myself from how lost I seemed to be with school, I turned back to doing what I never finished over break; searching for internships. I had found two perfect summer internship opportunities at an animation studio near my home that could lead directly to a career path that I could only dream of. I was looking at their story artist position, the guy who draws the storyboards. Basically the cinematographer of animation. The only problem was that in terms of animation….my portfolio was looking a little below their standards. I had plenty left over from my film school portfolios that seemed to work well enough, but not a lot of complete storyboards. Most of my projects were pretty rushed, so many of my storyboards mainly were just thumbnails than more thought out and well drawn shots. I wanted to show that my drawing skills haved developed over the years and that I had the ability to put what vision I had for a shot onto paper clearly in the form of an animated 2D character. I had the skills for cinematography, composition, and storytelling, it was just the quality of my artwork that needed to be improved apon. So with the deadline approaching in less than a few weeks, I began my second week of the second quarter planning out my new storyboard addition to my portfolio. Let’s just say….it’s a lot harder trying to accomplish this thanks to my overly ambitious ideas. I really should just try to keep it simple for once.
Thanks to that though, the beginning of my winter quarter has been a bit overwhelming. It’s getting difficult to keep up with schoolwork already because I keep prioritizing the internship portfolio, so my goal is to try and balance managing both. Get a little bit of the portfolio done each day, but save the rest of the day for completing schoolwork that actually affects my grade if not turned in (and also things like this blog that I completely forgot to post because I was so wrapped around my portfolio lol). Even once this portfolio is sumbitted, however, I have a feeling that this winter quarter will still be much more overwhelming than the previous quarter at UCI. My ambition and impatience got the best of me and I ended up applying for several leadership board positions in my badminton club, decided on auditioning for our k-pop club’s next festival performance, and probably will join the game design club cause idk. It’s going to be a busy quarter and I just might end up regretting it, but that’s just how I roll in life. When you’re feeling lost, just start peaking your nose in what you find interest in and you’ll find something you love. If you are feeling lost at UCI at the moment, I hope you know now that you’re not alone. And yeah maybe you’ll find that what you really want to do can’t be done here, but we’ve just started, so don’t give up on this place just yet. There are still tons of things to try out. And if you’re really anxious about it just do what I’m doing and try everything at UCI while also doing everything you find interesting outside of school….it’s only at the cost of sacrificing your sanity mwahaha 😀 Anyways! Don’t give up since you’ve only just begun. You’ll make Peter sad.
