Day 18

Above: Sadie, Hillary, and Raquel

Today I discussed the different paths that some of my co-workers at Outside the Lens took through college and beyond and how that led them to working at OTL.

First I talked to Hilary. Hilary was actually one of the first people that I met at OTL. A friend of mine was exhibiting a short film she made with OTL on an exchange trip to Bosnia the fall of my junior year, and she was very excited to introduce me to Hillar, who she got to know really well on the trip. She was also the person that interviewed me for my junior year internship, and admittedly, she probably has the best music taste in the office. Hillary graduated a couple years ago from UCSD with a double major in Digital Arts and Communications. While in college, she took a few classes in arts education, where she discovered that she really enjoyed working with kids. After doing a year of work with AmeriCorps she began at Outside the Lens as a media educator and the volunteer coordinator.

I also talked to Raquel, another media educator. Raquel has been with OTL since last January, she was hired during my first internship, and she primarily works in the classroom and she also manages OTL’s social media. Once my mentor, Iggy, showed me her social media posting spreadsheet/schedule, and it was one of the most organized yet completely chaotic things I’ve ever seen. Between writing email blasts and photoshop work, in the office she usually plays Mexican 90’s jams, and she always has a sense of humor about things. Raquel studied sculpture at SDSU, and then went on to grad school at the Art Institute in Chicago. She worked as visual arts teacher in Costa Rica for a while, and in Costa Rica she got involved in nonprofit work which inspired her to look for a job at an arts oriented nonprofit when she recently moved back to San Diego.

Lastly I talked to Sadie, another media educator. Sadie is one of the newer members of the OTL team, and thusly, I probably know her the least out of everyone there. She’s from Oklahoma and usually plays country music when she has the chance to DJ. Sadie went to Oklahoma State and got a degree in digital media. She worked for a couple years in her hometown doing video work for various companies, including a brief stint as the AV person at a funeral home, before moving to San Diego a few months ago and getting a job at Outside the Lens.

It’s interesting to me that all of them majored in art, film, or media related fields, because I’m actually going into school as a fine art major this Fall. I’m really not quite sure where it’s going to lead me career-wise. A lot of people think that art majors are practically career prospects-suicide, but I kind of disagree. One thing that I’ve found to be true for most people who were art majors that I’ve talked to is that in general they usually actually like what they’re doing. This is definitely true at Outside the Lens, everyone here is here because they genuinely have a passion for empowering students through arts education. If i end up graduating with an art degree, I would hope that I could find a field to work in that I could be passionate about.