Dreaming Bigger

Exactly a year ago I started my first internship at Georgia Public Broadcasting, an NPR member station in Atlanta. Fast forward to today, I have gotten job interviews with some pretty big publications that before were only a dream. Although I didn’t make it to round 3 of the hiring process I noted them as big wins because of how far I have come in such a short time. I ultimately decided to freelance as an Audio Producer in Los Angeles and I give myself props for even engaging with the idea of freelancing because it is scary as hell, but that’s for my next post.

Living the dream

Once I stepped into the NPR offices it was surreal and remained surreal for a long time. I thought this feeling would disappear after a few weeks, at most. I was paralyzed with amazement, imposter syndrome and an eagerness to prove myself. I was putting so much pressure on myself to make sure that this internship led to a full time gig and to never leave NPR for the rest of my life. Bottom line, I was trying to have security and stability before I left my 20’s when I made a career switch just a few months before.

But I couldn’t meet my own expectations. During my internship I was trying to establish a routine after recently moving back home (after 10 years) and experienced losing my grandma who I moved back to LA to care for. It was emotionally rough but aside from these transitions there was still something gnawing at my paralysis.

It hit me four months later, two weeks before my internship was going to end.

I never thought I would intern at NPR. I thought getting there would be the highest I would and could go. And it all came faster than I expected.

I mean I was only a few months in striving to get into the field and didn’t even feel comfortable calling myself a journalist. To where now I was an intern at a place I saw would be my end game.

And then I asked myself, “why the hell is this as far as I can go?” And, “why does having a career in radio feel equivalent to the impossible?”

Getting a Ph.D was more realistic and practical for me. It wasn’t necessarily being an audio producer that seemed out of reach but more so, doing something creative as a career.

I was on a sensical path of going to college, getting my masters and then a stable job for the rest of my life within academia. My parents pushed academics as our way of moving up in the world. For me it was my ticket out of the only world I knew.

I kept telling others that I wanted to get a Ph.D since I was an undergrad so that prospect was normalized. This was in major part to my getting a scholarship that would pay for it. So I felt it would be wild if I didn’t pursue a doctorate plus, I knew I loved teaching and would want to do it someday.

As a consequence, I questioned my decisions from my major to certain career paths. But I never questioned that before leaving my 20’s I would have my career on lock. During my masters I was still contemplating medical school and decided against it because I knew myself — I would fall into a deep depression trying to complete my studies. I then questioned academia for the first time. I asked myself, “am I doing what I want to do or because I don’t want to lose the scholarship?” Is it because I wouldn’t be able to find other ways to fund it when I am ready to go back or because I don’t want be looked at ridicoulously for giving up a scholarship? Simply asking myself these questions I felt the weight being lifted from my shoulders. I didn’t even know I was carrying this heaviness.

I jumped into journalism always thinking I could bridge it with academia — and I know I still can — but I had to explain to my parents that it wasn’t just an itch I had to scratch and get out of system. It was something I was seriously considering and wanted to make a career out of. I think they were waiting for me to have my fun and then return to academia, because I kind of was too.

Self-oppression

Sitting in the LA offices of NPR I began to visualize and feel nearer to the life I always imagined but never thought I would have. I was having fun every day with amazing people, helping to tell stories and being creative and resourceful. I was also seeing the flaws, as all organizations have, and de-romanticized NPR. This was a crucial step in realizing my own worth and what I truly wanted to do with my life. I always said that my age would not prevent me from changing careers because I wanted to live many lives. But I was sitting there scared to wholeheartedly do it at the age of 26.

I got so frustrated with myself. It began with thoughts of not doing enough in my internship, not producing enough bylines, then it went to not feeling I could be my whole self at my internship, for still feeling I needed to hold back. Then for knowing how capitalism, the system of whiteness and structural violence have impacted communities of color and me. But it was also me contributing to this oppression. That’s when I snapped.

How was I going to hold myself back when all the people before me worked so hard to give me the chance to live my own life and only fuck it up by my damn self?

I realized how much of that oppression I was working upon myself that led to my paralysis. I thought, sheeeeeiiiiiiit being an audio producer is just the start. I can do whatever I want, so what is it that you want Isa?

I didn’t have an answer. But, it felt great to not have one and instead have all of the possibilities in the world. I then separated my talents, skills, and identity from my title, the organization I was in and what value society placed on certain careers. I don’t want to live another day with the weight (of others and myself) burdening my happiness.

It’s ironic because I was always frustrated within academia for depending on it to teach me all I need to know. But Audre told us all, The Masters Tools Will Never Dismantle the Masters House, so I knew that I knew better. I also made it a point to be a human and know who I was outside of being a student and not get lost in that system. Here I was fully breaking out of it so freelancing became more real and appropriate to leap into fully.

And that is what my next post will be about — how scared/excited I am to be a freelancer because it will ask me to put into action everything I have learned about myself that I mentioned above, and that which I have yet to discover.