A Shared Vision
Blue (dir. Derek Jarman, 1993)
WHEN I FIRST APPLIED to graduate school for journalism in January 2020, I was most excited to acquire technical skills, like learning how to use a video camera, as well as audio and video editing programs to tell stories. At the time, I couldn’t foresee two major events that would drastically alter my educational journey, and, in many ways, my sense of self.
Unsurprisingly, one such event was the pandemic. Doing journalism school online, we relied on our smartphones to capture all of our visual and audio content. This was disappointing for everyone in the program who wanted a taste of what it’s like to be a professional documentarian: setting up lighting and cameras and collaborating in editing suites. Yet, in some ways, the experience we had is akin to that of more and more journalists, who are sent out into the field on their own to create multimedia content with only their smartphones on hand. Adjusting our expectations of what the year would bring, we took comfort in the fact that we were sharing this experience even if we weren’t sharing a classroom.
Unfortunately, I encountered another obstacle that I experienced alone. As the first semester was ending, and as a 25-year-old, I was diagnosed with cataracts and glaucoma due to topical steroids I had been using for several years to treat an inflammatory eye disease called uveitis. My vision
