In the midst of the melancholy that was Grade 11, I did some research, put my eye on the prize – in this case, that prize was Ryerson University’s RTA School of Media program for media production – and worked as hard as I could to get the best grades possible and as much media-related experience as I could in my hometown. Nine painfully dull months later, I received an early admission to that very program. I could see the light at the end of the tunnel – now all I had to do was maintain a laughably low GPA and graduate.
Flash-forward another nine months and it’s September 2018: I’m moving to Toronto, buying a bunch of stuff I never knew I needed and starting my first semester of media production. Right from Day 1 of classes, I knew I wasn’t going to be getting much sleep over the next four years. Emails began flooding my Ryerson inbox with opportunities and postings, applications and extra credit. Walking the halls of the Rogers Communications Centre (RCC) was like attending a career fair every single day. A conversation with one of your peers often felt more like an informal job interview. There was so much to do, so many choices – it was overwhelming. Choose this over that and you might cost yourself a networking opportunity. Choose that over this and you might miss out on working on an award-winning practicum. And though I tried, one thing became very clear: you couldn’t do it all.
I know you must be thinking…too many opportunities isn’t a bad problem to have. I agree it isn’t a bad problem to have – in fact, it’s a huge privilege and it’s what first attracted me to media production and Ryerson University as a whole. But all of it was starting to get to me, to say the least.
By second semester of first-year, I was hosting a weekly news radio show on SpiritLive solo. I was also working two part-time jobs, one at the Recreation and Athletics Centre (RAC) as a lifeguard and the other at a restaurant as a server. I was mercilessly applying to summer internships so that I would have something to show for the four-month grace period that lay ahead of me. I was preparing for a 10-day filmmaking course that was taking place in Finland in May, all while trying to audition and forge a path for myself as an actress in the Toronto film industry, pass my full course load and accumulate creative practice hours doing menial labour for arrogant fourth-year practicum students. And still, I was telling myself, “You’re not doing enough! You’re not doing enough to gain experience, learn practical skills, meet important people, make money and overall, secure some semblance of predictability over your future in an industry that provides no such thing.”
My scope got narrower and narrower – I began only accepting invitations and seeking out opportunities that would quantifiably increase my career prospects during and post-graduation, all measured against some arbitrary metric I created to determine my success, and ultimately, my self-worth as a person. I began to view my friends and acquaintances as competition. I would invest time in only what I thought was going to help me achieve the outcome I was looking for. Now don’t get me wrong – time management skills are important and it’s not a bad idea to be economical with your energy, but I took it way too far. I was so exhausted from all the networking, the a** kissing, volunteering and working that when first-year came to an end, I was completely burnt out. I pushed myself through the summer working 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day in the west-end at a production house, and that was a great experience, but still, I was unfulfilled.
Second-year came knocking and I found myself wondering, “What’s the point?” I was circling the drain on a very important lesson: you can work really hard, do everything right, even go above and beyond, and still feel dissatisfied with your performance and the outcome. These existential questions followed me for the first semester of second-year and most of second semester. Just as I started to refocus and get the wind back in my sails, a global pandemic broke out and threw a Guinness World Records-sized wrench in everyone’s plans.
Between the many hours of online classes, refreshing the homepage of my YouTube subscriptions, and every now and again enjoying the comfort in a good lie on a soft carpet, staring aimlessly at the patterns on my parents’ parchment white ceiling, I had some time to think about the predicament I had found myself in these past few semesters. It’s not as though I didn’t know what I was getting myself into when I accepted my offer of admissions – it’s not even that I was unpleasantly surprised with the nature of my program. It was more that I was just completely unprepared for how to maintain balance with my schedule and my psyche. Fellow students in my program and in the Faculty of Communication and Design (FCAD) as a whole have expressed similar struggles with balance, competition and self-worth. However, I find this phenomenon affects a particular type of individual. For the sake of plainness, I’ll refer to this individual as a “planner”. This person receives a special type of gratification from crossing things off a list or ticking a box. They likely have their life subdivided into various colour-coordinated squares, and though it may always be changing, their three-to-five-year plan has been thoroughly researched and documented. It’s an interesting paradox: highly intensive programs like the ones I have described is this person’s simultaneous paradise and Achilles heel.
I find programs like these to be numerous at Ryerson. This university, which was previously called Ryerson Polytechnical Institute, according to Ryerson Archives and Special Collections, has a short history and is located in the heart of Canada’s biggest metropolis. As a result, the university is largely made up of commuters, and try as they might, this doesn’t leave much room for a traditional university experience if that’s what you’re looking for. This encourages a productive work environment amongst students. I remember when I first moved to Toronto, I made note of how easy it was to let the relentless buzz and energy of this city seep into my lifestyle and work habits. When channeled, it felt much easier to work myself into a productive flow state that could go on for days straight, or sometimes even weeks, before coming up for air. This is one of the unique characteristics Ryerson has to offer and part of what differentiates it from other university-based towns that provide a more traditional student experience.
Taking a closer look at FCAD and creative programs, they too act as a conduit for this phenomenon. They teach practical skills and facilitate an intense and comprehensive education. They’re very project-based and require few written examinations. The assignments are collaborative and call on relevant industry-standard practical skills. This format prompts students to think and work from a career-oriented stance constantly. I know this to be different at other universities, even in their respective media faculties. When curriculums take a less hands-on and more of a theoretical approach to their teachings, students aren’t as surrounded by post-graduation opportunities or as exposed to the future possibilities that lay before them. And it’s not that hard to imagine – when you boil down creative programs purely to readings and examinations, students aren’t constantly being prompted to imagine their future and intensely forge a path toward their ideal career.
Furthermore, I sometimes find grades and feedback to be much more important to students studying in the creative sector than the stereotype would assume because the things we’re learning directly correlate with the skills we’re expected to have when entering the job market post-graduation. Think about it – if you’re studying business and ultimately want to go into real estate, nobody cares if you failed first-year calculus, and moreover, not possessing a keen aptitude for arithmetic and calculus isn’t necessarily going to limit your chance of becoming a successful real estate agent. However, in media production, if you fail or perform poorly in your mandatory single-camera, multi-camera or audio production classes, and you ultimately want to pursue a career in broadcast media, it will have a much greater impact on the pathways available to you in the future as well as take a huge toll on your self-esteem. The bar of achievement and success is different. Someone in the former situation must merely pass and achieve their degree in order to move forward with the necessary training, whereas in the case of the latter, every grade you get is like a career aptitude test. I could go even further to suggest that those studying in the creative industries are required to accumulate a certain amount of industry experience and portfolio material before graduation – after all, experience is the currency of the media industry, and your work speaks for you. Whereas, with the average business undergraduate degree for example, your first employer doesn’t expect you to have already worked full-time for a successful enterprise or launched your own self-funded startup before the age of 22.
“You’re not doing enough!” – I would wake up and tell myself. “You’re not doing enough!” – I would tell myself when I closed my eyes at night. This line of thinking and obsessive behaviour ultimately turned me into a maniacal control freak, a self-imposed label I’m still trying to dismantle to this day. I suppose what I would like to say to anyone else who’s studying in a creative field – putting immense pressure on themselves, feeding their competitive demon, making selfish decisions without batting an eye and experiencing a very small inadequate portion of life – is…, “You are doing enough. Take a deep breath and remember that despite whatever that daytime television guest promoting their new self-help book would like you to believe, no amount of tyrannical control you exert over your life at age 19 is going to result in true fulfillment and happiness. You are doing enough.”