Roy H. Park School of Communications — Ithaca College

My first semester in the Park School at Ithaca involved a lot of settling, a lot of figuring out, a lot of being incredibly grateful and happy to be here. It also involved a class called S’Park, the basic class every Parkie has to take that introduced us to the media industry, included late night Skype calls with alums, and added in lessons about important (albeit rather liberal) topics in film. We watched Childish Gambino’s “This is America” music video and talked about the significance the media has on race, and were given a presentation about how the media portrays strong women. Interest choices in a school that is 75% white and 65% male. But important and valuable lessons to be sure.

The class was a basic 100 level that, as with any required class, resulted in grumbles and complaints of every freshman in the school. But the speakers and lessons were designed for a purpose, though few freshman could see it. It showed us the possibilities in media. It showed us alums who are out in the field doing what we all came here to do one day. And the topics they brought up were nothing short of some of the most important topics of our time.

One night, David Brooks, an Op-Ed columnist at the New York Times, came to give a presentation on media. In a conference room full of hundreds of people at 8:00 at night, he gave an unexpectedly important talk. His thoughts on media filled only part of his talk. The rest – the answers to the purpose of life.

He told the story many successful people tell, that most people fall into a ditch at one point or another. They realize where they are, what job they have, where they’re headed, and understand that it is not at all what they want. Better in your 20s than your 50s, Brooks pointed out. But this story is timeless, ageless, and often hopeless. Americans today are usually overwhelmingly disappointed in their lives.

The solution? Lead a life that matters. Turn off your phone and go out into the metaphorical wilderness and change your life. Find joy.

Joy is different from happiness. Happiness is momentary, fleeting. Joy is more permanent. It is more encompassing, leading to true fulfillment instead of simply momentary pleasure. Brooks concluded that happiness is also often selfish, focused on your own emotions and ‘how can I make me happy?’ Will taking that bath make you happy? Will getting ahead of others make you happy? This is different from joy – as Brooks put it, joy is the erasure of the self. Once you eliminate the focus on ‘me,’ you are open to deeper connections with others. You are more in tune with the world around you. These kinds of connections lead to a joyful existence.

I find this in direct correlation to media. For me, the Park School offers a conduit to a life fulfilled, a life spent chasing joy and deeper connections around the globe. Of journalism, Brooks said that the job is to poke, to make people think. This kind of service to the world around you seems a recipe for fulfillment. It is others-focused, erasing yourself and your own perceptions to explore the problems and stories of others, and the act of sharing this with the world give deeper meaning to your own life.

My dream is to make documentaries around the globe. It allows me travel, to find joy in other cultures, to form deep connections with other people, and (selfishly) to keep me out of the ditch. I don’t want to wake up, in my 20s or in my 50s, and realize my ditch is made of quicksand, pulling me deeper into a hole of monotony and mundane. I want to spend every day climbing up mountains, away from the holes in the ground.

“The wrong question is what do you want from life. Instead, what is life asking of you? What problem is there for you to solve?”

Brooks concluded his talk with this thought: what if we need to stop looking for what we want to get out of life? What if we need to change from a consumer mindset to one of selflessness and growth? What problem is there for us to solve? Everyone, truly everyone can solve a problem. Everyone has a skill that can be useful in some regard. For me, I believe I can use media to solve problems, to show the world the untold stories, to help people establish deeper connections to one another. I believe I can solve problems, because how can a problem begin to be solved without people knowing about it? I will speak up. I will use my voice to yell to the world, to tell of the problems of our times. This is my place in industry. This is my goal at Ithaca College.

So that class in the Park School that no one cared about? Maybe it wasn’t at an optimal time (7:30pm is not a time I focus well when I’m hungry and sleep deprived), and maybe there were too many immature freshman in a room to really focus clearly. But in the end it introduced us to what the Park School is all about – solving problems through media.