Is there even a point?

digmedia
Fri, 18 Feb 2011 16:23:43 +0000

bears and dogs - some answers to your questions:

1. He has always been a very self-directed, focused individual who always dug into things. For example, in the 8th grade, when everyone had to get TI-83 calculators, he went beyond just learning how to use it and wrote programming tutorials (BASIC and ASM) for the ticalc.org site that were, at one point, being downloaded 200 times a day. Typical scenario: I’d walk into his room and find him IM’ing with a teacher in Japan, who was getting his advice on methods of clearing student calculators before a test.

2. Honestly, no doubts. Lots of stories I will save you from, but he had a way of always “rising to the top.”

3. My CC name actually came from the Digital Media Studies program at Penn. I thought it would have been perfect for him at one point, but he was veering away from the multi-media stuff to more of a film focus during HS, so that became less of a goal.

4. Fortunately, his first choice and my first choice were one and the same, after we did visits to lots of schools.

As far as his passion, if you read the “advice” I give to future production majors (see the “Featured” threads at the top of this group). that was what my son did in high school. So you can see how into it he was. There is another parent on this forum (maddenmd) whose kid has very similar film-related activities. I have no doubt that maddenmd’s kid will also succeed. It just seems to be wired in, somehow.

One thing about my son: he seems to be more interested in the technical side of things (basically involving computers) like editing and visual effects than into “film” itself. He was always sort of less interested in what we would call “film studies” although he had classes in that area.