The Path Less Taken

By Tessa Moran

Bear with me as I rationalize my choice to quit my job, spend all my savings, and traipse to the middle east to film a documentary. This post could be considered an ode to my naysayers, of which there are plenty. And admittedly it serves as a remedy to my own doubts that bubble up daily.

Over the years, I’ve found myself consumed by what I “should be doing.” I’d enroll in classes in which I knew I could achieve an A, and racked up hosts of interships I believed would amplify my resume enough to propell me to success. Even then, my perception of success was skewed. In journalism, the career I’d worked towards, success to me meant landing a job as a producer at a major network or as a writer at the Washington Post. But those companies are a trademark for quality, and they represent the culmination of years of successes pronounced modestly through compelling pieces of writing or video. They represent failures, too. And I needed to experience those modest, yet personal and profound moments of success and failure.

I’ll spare you the dozens upon dozens of famous quotes heralding the importance of failure. Anyone who’s tasted it, including myself, will attest that it is disheartening to say the least. But it holds tremendous value as a lesson for what not to do the next time. There were many failures in Barberin’, our first project as a documentary team. We didn’t lock the exposure, the audio was interrupted by a loud television, and we were shaky in our camera work. Our failures as a working team were manifested later in the emotional tifts we had within a five foot by five foot editing suite. We knew how to be lovers, but not working partners.

The unique aspect of “learning by doing,” is that when failures occur, you are ultimately faced with the challenge of discerning why they happened and how they can be remedied. When it came to working with eachother, Ben and I realized that our main problem was communication. Ben tended to be hyper-focused on minutia, while I tended towards the greater picture. And while our differing strengths lended to a great product in the end, we had yet to figure out how to make them work together seamlessly.

“Learing by doing” is not valued as much as it should. Graduate degrees are often considered the end-all-be-all means of attaining expertise and propelling one through a specific career path. In many cases, graduate programs are essential. I’d rather my attorney and my physician get their degrees instead of “learning by doing.” But in many other cases, I believe the practicum outweighs the classroom. While journalism school and film school have their merits — namely connections, the use of expensive equipment, and the leisure to focus on study– they also cost money, and do not necessarily guarantee a position in those fields, as do law school and medical school.

Might that money be better spend learning from our failures than reading those lessons in a book? Ben and I thought so, and we believed the decision seemed rational. However, when we shared it with others, we did not receive the positive response we had hoped. It seemed that everyone felt the endeavor was risky and irresponsible. I wondered how our plan was any more risky than enrolling in graduate school, which comes with greater cost and no guaranteed benefit. Or even sitting endless days in a cubicle waiting for the opportunity to demonstrate our abilities. Why not proove it on our own?

There are endless examples of individuals who have done it on their own and succeeded. Benjamin Franklin, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Ben & Jerry, Howard Hughes, and John D. Rockefeller are just a handful. Granted these individuals are geniuses in their own right, but beside intellect, they possess creativity, ingenuity, and drive. I know plenty of people who have all of those traits, but they are too fearful of failure to express them.

It is uncertain whether Ben or I have the formula for success, whether our desire and our belief in our talent will be enough. But if we don’t test the waters, we will never know — a path upon which I am too fearful to tread.