Tufts Blogs

Today the Common App went live. For many of the rising seniors reading this, that event will have no bearing on you until you finally claw your way out of the pit of procrastination and click submit with a day to spare. This event also has no bearing on me, a rising college junior and successful Common App completer. But upon hearing that high school seniors are now able to officially start applying to colleges I took a moment to reflect on my own application process. I’m not going to lie, it was pretty brutal. I never, to this day, felt really proud of my personal essay, and yet writing it was so draining. After writing paragraph after paragraph of “Why [instert medium-sized, Northeast, liberal-arts school]?” I really questioned whether or not I even liked any of them. And supplemental essays felt like an impossible task to both be true to myself and also be the most interesting person in the world.

Out of curiosity I thought I’d take a look at this year’s supplemental questions for Tufts and take a stab at answering one of them. So now I present you my 200-250 word answer (okay I cheated it’s 270 words) to the following prompt:

“Artist Bruce Nauman once said: "One of the factors that still keeps me in the studio is that every so often I have to more or less start all over." Everyone deals with failure differently; for most artists failure is an opportunity to start something new. Tell us about a time when you have failed and how that has influenced your art practice.”

              I struggle to call my directorial debut feature a “failure,” as it was never meant to be more than a learning tool. But I believe that I myself failed often during the production process, and these failures have directly led to inspiration for my next production. For example, much of the actual art of the film, like staging and lighting, was left to spontaneity. I was so focused on the things that didn’t matter that I let my film’s potential beauty fall away. In the future I plan to run tests on location to immaculately prepare for production. I also failed to communicate effectively with my actors. Looking back on footage of me talking to the cast, I can clearly see how inarticulately I was conveying what I wanted. I now am so conscious of my directing techniques, and am looking forward to having another chance to be a student director and work with student actors. But most importantly, I failed to ask for help when I needed it. When things went wrong I would either pile all of the work on myself, leaving me unable to effectively complete any task, or push it onto another crew member, who in turn would be unable to complete their own tasks. It’s hard to step past my pride and admit that I don’t know what I’m doing, or worse, am incapable of doing it. But my film could have been far better had I simply accepted the help of others. If there’s one failure that I want to keep in my art practice forever, it’s my failure to make any art alone.