Pursuing Passions

By Martin Corpus

For anyone who is beginning a new career, there is always going to be a lot happening at once. There’s learning about your company, attending staff meetings, meeting project deadlines, and it feels like the list never ends! Although there may be immediate needs to address while you’re on the clock, there are also a couple of things that I encourage you to take time to practice. Staying sharp and successfully growing in your career are always important and here are two ways you could go about those three tasks:

1. Constantly practice: Regardless of what career you are pursuing, you should practice skills and develop new ones through activities that interest you. This prepares you for any job opportunity that fits your interest. For example, I’m interested in camera work, so I continue to practice my photography and filmography to stay competitive if an opportunity in the field does arise. Every day, I try to take at least one picture or short video clip. As for training myself on new skills, I start by identifying skills I want to improve, then I lay out a plan to strengthen them. I have never been a strong painter, but through practice, I have improved a skill that might serve me in my future job prospects. I have nerve tremors in my hands and arms which can sometimes hinder my ability to maneuver a paint brush. Rather than panicking about not being a good painter, I have trained myself to slowly move the brush and look at where I want the brush to go on my canvas. Time spent practicing skills in your field is time well spent.

2. Continuously learn from others: You can benefit yourself by making it a point to learn from others. No one knows it all. Search out people who are more knowledgeable about your field than you and that could be useful resources. When you aren’t able to find someone in person, make use of online resources (I recommend highly-viewed YouTube videos as they will likely provide accurate information and give you visual and verbal explanations of what you want to know). Learning from your others can empower you to teach others in the future and expand your knowledge in your field, therefore making yourself much more serviceable to your eventual employer. If we don’t make use of what we learn, what was the point of learning it to begin with? From my own experiences, I’ve taken time to speak with independent cinematographers and video producers to learn about editing softwares (also called “NLE’s (Non-Linear Editors)”). Not only did I learn how to do specific tasks within each one but also why certain NLE’s are often preferred over others for certain project types (ex. FCPX for new media art, Adobe Premier for films and commercials, etc.). Eventually, when opportunities in school arrived, I was able to educate my peers who were new to video production on which NLE they would benefit more from for their projects and guide them through the technical basics of their selected NLE.

3. Practice talking about your work: Discussing your current work with other people can be good for you to practice. You can educate others on your field of expertise, assess your own understanding of your field, and even excite people about an upcoming opportunity! At the moment, I am working on a book called Mind Imagined which critiques different elements of modern society. When people ask me, “what do you do for a living?” or, “what have you been up to since graduation?” I always talk about my current work but try to word my explanations differently each time. It allows me to practice pitching my idea for when I look for editors and publishers, build a potential audience for my book, and I can even share some reflections on my writing process so that others might be able to gain a fresh perspective.

These three suggestions on career goal achievement can be taken by anyone in any field. For me, knowing how competitive my field of interest is, making a routine out of them will be of great benefit to me even after I find my place in the creative industries.