En fin, je voudrais remercier

Steve, TruthNugget, et Moi

I do not know where to begin. I guess that’s always hard when you’re at the end. This is my last assignment unchecked on my to do list for college. The last thing to write before I pick up my cap and gown and head to Avery Fisher Hall to graduate. This post is also my final post for five classes with Steve Hutkins, the last post of four different blogged courses over the course of my academic career.

I have enjoyed blogging for these classes because I love writing, and this site has given me the perfect forum to reflect on both readings and my personal experiences of place, space, Manhattan, and Paris. I have tried to use this space as an academic and intellectual journal to document what I have learned, to capture ephemeral experiential knowledge I have gained over the years so that I may look back on it and remember. The act of blogging proved most useful for me for the abroad tutorial The Art of Travel. When preparing for my Colloquium, I looked back to my thoughts on books and films I covered in past blog posts. I was also able to remember the nearly indescribable feeling of living in Paris for four months, to remember how turned on I was by life and learning. All of these courses have enabled me to think and keep track on a serious academic level as well as a very personal, creative level. And already looking back on my time in college, I know these five classes have changed me and shaped me into who I am today.

As I have probably said many times before, I want to be a film editor. As I head out into an unscheduled, unplanned life of opportunity – the real world- I am taking my understanding of place, the concept of the city, and the artist within his or her surroundings with me. For now, I will edit anything, I just want to be better, to have this key filmmaking skill down. But in the end, or hopefully the middle, I hope to work on features that capture the essence of the city, just as Jean-Luc Godard’s “A Bout de Souffle” and John Schlesinger’s “Midnight Cowboy” and so so many others managed to do. I have always loved to travel and experience new cities, but studying with Steve enabled me to hone in on my true passion for cities, and living in Manhattan and Paris during my time at NYU showed me how I wanted to process my passion and turn it into a career and life goal.

I am inspired and eternally grateful.