I will always – ALWAYS – be grateful to my parents for letting me go after my dreams. When I said I wanted to be a pianist, they got me lessons. When I said I wanted to be an actress, they took me to auditions. When I said I wanted to be a singer, well, that’s what the last post was about. When I said I wanted to major in acting instead, they signed loan forms and sent me.

Problem was, I hated acting.

On a whim, I’d auditioned at Syracuse with a monologue I couldn’t remember the name of. Like literally, when asked, I couldn’t remember the name. It was very embarrassing. But they took me anyway. I was surrounded by passionate people who’d done Shakespeare in the park and staged their own versions of Rent. My year in the drama department is a book in itself, but suffice it to say that I knew I was out by the end of first semester.

So there I sat: eighteen, undirected, faced with the unexpected choosing of a new life plan. “I like Rolling Stone,” I thought. “Maybe I could like, write for them or something.”

I enrolled in the Newhouse School of Communications (my GPA was stunningly high, going in) as a magazine journalism major. Problem was, I couldn’t type. Not at all. In-class article deadlines? DAILY writing exercises? So not happening. I didn’t even last two classes before switching to film. “Television, Radio, and Film”, to be exact. And it was there I discovered my penchant for documentary.

So I went from pianist to singer to actress to independent documentary filmmaker, with a brief stopover at Rolling Stone (in my mind).

I mean, honestly. At some point wouldn’t you want to have just sat me down and laid shit out? Listen girl, someday you’re going to want money. Maybe you should consider going into marketing.