My Journey to RTF by Dariel

My Journey to RTF by Dariel - February 2024 Scholarship Essay

How do you think your experiences in your life shape you and your thought processes? While I can’t answer the question for you I can give my take. My experiences have either given me clarity or bettered me as a person. As far as shaping me and my thoughts I feel that the encounters I’ve had in life have changed the way I think about things and in turn changed my personality. That being said, a number of those experiences did play a role in my choosing Radio-Television-Film (RTF) as my major.

Every great story starts at the beginning, so I’ll give you a glimpse into some childhood experiences that led me towards RTF. I grew up a middle child. Though I’m the 7th child (of 8) in the birth order I only grew up with two other siblings (with occasional visits from the others). Now I know what you’re thinking ‘What does being the middle sibling have to do with me choosing RTF?’, well it’s one of the reasons I got into RTF. Growing up my older sister and younger brother were like their own team and many times (even to this day) I was excluded. Since I couldn’t connect with them, I found solace in the next best thing TV shows and movies. The characters in TV shows and movies gave me comfort. For example, Lincoln from The Loud House was one of my favorites because I could relate to him. My love for film and television blossomed into a love for how it was all created.

That love for the creation process didn’t become a focused and developed passion until my freshman year of high school (what I call the COVID-19 year). Since I was fully virtual during 9th grade, I had a lot of time on my hands. I used that time to reflect on myself and better myself. I also used that time to figure out what I wanted to do after high school. By this time, I had already started analyzing TV show characters and how the stuff happening behind the scenes was elevating the on-screen plot. I was also the media director for my church, so I was getting some audio-visual experience. One day I asked myself ‘How can I make my love for film and television into a career that makes me happy and brings me success?’. Then I researched careers that were in the film and production industry but also incorporated the skills I was developing at my church, and as I went down the rabbit hole, I kept landing on RTF and other closely related majors.

All in all, it was my interests as a child and a reflective year that produced a curiosity for how I could make my passion profitable that led me to Radio-Television-Film as my first choice major. Though there are so many other experiences that contributed to my decision, the ones presented in this essay are the ones that were the most impactful.