And to all

Last week, I was talking with Patrick and Han about post-grad, how I had recently learned that the salary I should expect from an entry-level job in the field I want to pursue, television, is around $30,000. I bemoaned it for a bit because that is just an unliveable salary in New York City and contemplated how to survive. The two's comments regarding my situation dripped with disdain, basically dismissing the career path I worked my whole college career on as an insensible one. I thought about what to do, trying to figure out what job I should ultimately do instead if TV doesn't fall through for me. The alternatives seemed promising, but I began to cry because deep down, I didn't ever want to be in this position, to have to choose to do anything but TV.

Today was the last day of lecture for my Producing for TV class. My professor closed off the class asking us, "If you couldn't be in television, what would be doing?"

As my classmates around me started muttering answers like "surgeon," "lawyer," "stocks," I thought quietly to myself. Advertising? That's the closest thing to TV I could do if I really couldn't do TV. But even with that reasoning, I still couldn't actually believe this to be the truth. Even then, I still wouldn't want to do advertising. I didn't know what my answer would be.

But then my professor spoke up.

"Your answer should be 'nothing.'

You're in television because you love it. There's nowhere else you'd want to be. Otherwise, you will never survive. Have a good night, everyone."

Every speaker who comes to speak to us from every different corner of the TV industry always teaches us, among all the technical skills and characteristics we need to have to be successful in TV, above all, we need passion. Passion is your drive. Passion is what gets you out of bed in the morning. Passion is what keeps you up past 5am to perfect that script, that take, that edit.

Passion is what feeds your soul.

Good night, everyone.