Three years ago I applied to an MFA program at School of Visual Arts. In that, I had to do a couple of assignments as part of the application. This was the visual narrative project.
The other day, I found the statement I wrote regarding my assignment prompt in the depths of my computer that I had long since forgotten about and decided it was something I wanted to share.
Everybody makes mistakes. I’ve made a ton, like most people, and every time I do, I try to treat it as a learning experience more than anything. I chose this prompt for my assignments because it seems like something that everyone can easily relate to. Nobody’s perfect and I like stories that show humanness — whether it’s portraying the true grit of athlete life (my visual narrative) or talking about poor life choices one makes in early adulthood (my written assignment). I like stories that I think people will be able to see themselves in.
You could say I’m more of a non-fiction storyteller. I write and tell a better story when I can get inside the character’s head and understand their emotions and feelings. I’m a very detail-oriented person and if I don’t initially understand a character, I want to research as many details as possible so I can better identify with them.
My visual narrative assignment is about a competition for an Olympic weightlifter. While slightly fictionalized, I’ve competed in weightlifting so it was easy to convey the feelings and emotions of the character.
Like any sport, competitive weightlifters experience innumerable failures before experiencing any kind of success. Things don’t always go as planned; mistakes happen and it’s often how you learn from these mistakes to come back fighting that separates the winners from the losers. Of course, sometimes, it’s just hard and someone was better. That said, winning or losing in this sport is often within, depending how you look at it.
Athletes have fascinating stories to tell. You can’t really make progress if you aren’t willing to make a mistake along the way and if you make mistakes along the way, you have something to learn from. This creates a story. I’ve never been one to shy away from sharing videos on social media of a failed attempt at a competition or in training. I prefer to show it all — the whole story. People deserve to know just how hard being an athlete really is instead of just seeing the good days.
I believe that it’s how you learn from your mistakes that truly defines your character and it also doesn’t matter if you learn after one mistake or it takes you a few tries before you get it right.
What matters more, is that you continuously learn.
