Before he died, Dad told me how much he regretted spending life resenting his job. No matter what, he said, I want you to love what you do. I won’t pretend that he made me promise, but in remembering the look in his eyes, it doesn’t feel right to say that he didn’t, either. I feel his love gracing me as I write this statement, looking toward Boston’s skyline past my Arlington, Mass. apartment. This tired, angry city boasts that there is no room for love in the professional world. I smile back, knowing how wrong it is.

Love, I remind myself, does not mean anything goes. The love that I was raised with means hard work and sacrifice. When I say my academic goal is to love what I do, I mean I want to spend four hours working at the library on any given day, only to sneak a few more minutes on my laptop before bed. I want to develop new work, make mistakes, and rub shoulders with people I’d normally scream across a comments section at. Finally, I want to prove to myself that I have grown and healed since I earned the least impressive scores on my transcript, in the middle of an extensive delusional episode. Later, after treatment, I earned a semester GPA of 4.0 while taking three culminating finance classes and their prerequisite at the same time. What a difference a psychiatrist who cares can make for a student with bipolar disorder.

I remember being diagnosed, particularly the moment I began to consider the delusions might be delusions: when Dad found me in the hospital cafeteria. It was the last time he took care of me more than I took care of him. He hobbled a bit as he walked due to years of fighting brain cancer, then we sat down and forgot all about it. I’m sure the topic of my future career came up. By then, we had been discussing what a career in education would look like for me as a backup to life in the arts. I was excited for the chance to mentor the next generation. I still love to teach. I knew that teachers didn’t make much, but I didn’t care. The important thing was that I was going to do something I had a passion for. 

I had no idea how Watertown Public Schools would punish me for daring to try and help. Battles with payroll, students, and administration left me exhausted daily. I realized that my backup simply didn’t exist. Our education system sinks deeper into the hole we’ve dug for it each day. I want to be part of the solution, but I will not be a martyr for decades of neglect. 

This is all to say, I quit after the fifth or so time they found a way to cheat me of my pay. Next, I tried to take a job grading papers for Pearson. Shortly after sending me an offer, they rescinded, admitting their policy was to overhire, take on the first people to finish the paperwork, and rescind the other offers. I was laid off before I even started. Now, savings depleted, a scholarship would mean the difference for me between attending Cal State and not. 

As for the ‘real’ world – bosses, traffic, rent? The good news is I’ll be well-prepared by Cal State’s MFA program. Classes like Thriving in the Industry will prepare me to analyze the industry landscape for ripe opportunities. Through studying a breadth of storytelling forms, I will learn exactly what my workflow is and how to develop strong work through it. I will know if a writer’s room is really for me, or if the best path forward is creating alone. Either way, my writing will ripple across the industry. 

As a genderqueer person, I often wish I could choose who can view the clip in my hair as I walk down the street. As someone with mental illness, I can hide easier – and often do. It feels like once a day I hear the word bipolar used in media to refer to someone expressing strong emotions. A junkie is weak. A crackhead is crazy. In time, the rest of the world will understand the way mental illness can uproot your entire life and convince you that drugs are the only way through. Then, people will understand these words as the slurs they are. Perhaps I will be lucky enough to write the script that facilitates this conversation at Cal State LA.