Student Blog: Online Classes as Time Passes

As noted in my previous blog, I am taking a semester off— living at home, working, and taking enough online classes to maintain the required credit count for a scholarship. It is an odd feeling of being home. While it feels like an extension of the summer, it also feels like every day is part of a long weekend. Nothing is routine except the weekly due dates for my online classes. Each week is different, which makes things interesting, but also each week has the same priorities, which is not so interesting. Each week is composed of work shifts and class assignments, but all the same, there is no given structure. 

The classes I am taking this semester are all within my current decided major– film production. I am taking Editing I, Foundations Of Story, and Writing Scripts– which is technically a creative writing class. When I signed up for the script writing class, I was anticipating that we’d explore the forms and formats of scripts— stageplays, teleplays, and screenplays– however, that is not the case. Fine by me, it is still an interesting class. The course is set up in a workshop style, where we step by step develop, what will be our class final, a 10-page screenplay. So far I’ve enjoyed reading scripts and digging into how screenwriters can use words to develop a visual emotion. 

Two weeks ago we were asked to write a script outline and treatment for our 10-page story. Digesting the advice to “write what you know,” I decided to focus my screenplay on a protagonist who has a similar story to my own— the story of a Chinese adoptee. Knowing I only had 10 pages to write a story, I knew the story had to be small and simple, but being an adoptee I also wanted to avoid writing a story that used the ‘journey to my past’ and the 'cultural identity crisis’ cliches. Rather than writing a protagonist who aches over her lost beginning and is perplexed by her thought racial facade, I wrote an outline about an adoptee whose past comes to her. 

But this Friday I had my first phone call with my professor to get critiques. While he made some amazing points and suggestions about my story, he also pointed out the whiteness of not just my character, but of me. With this being my first interaction with my professor, I didn’t want to get political about my identity as an adoptee. I wanted to be professional and focus on my story. 

I ended the call with a bunch of notes, but also a bath of tears. But writing what’s personal hurts, right?