Opinion | Rediscovering my love for TV, even when I doubt myself
Sometimes when we have doubts we need a reminder of why we love what we’re studying. For me, that reminder came while watching the “Running Up That Hill” scene in “Stranger Things.” Photo collage by SIMRAH AHMAD, staff photographer
I was standing in the middle of my friend's apartment — looking at the life they've built since the last time I saw her — the first time I truly questioned my career choice. This was definitely not the best moment for that, since all I wanted to do was enjoy my summer vacation.
Still, once the doubt started trickling in, it became a wave of uncertainty that kept growing and growing.
Emilia Cuevas Diaz, opinions editor
We come to college to prepare for our futures. We go to classes and learn as much as possible before we go out into the world and start working. But sometimes, in the four years we spend here working on getting our degrees, we are faced with the reality that this is what we will be doing for the rest of our lives. And sometimes, we find ourselves unprepared for that reality.
We chose what we wanted to do with our lives when we were still in high school and we're supposed to just trust that we had the insight we needed to make the right choice. It makes sense that we have doubts about it now. It’s reasonable that we don't trust our high school selves and their choices.
But deep down, there's usually a good reason for the decision that brought us to where we are today, and all we need is to be reminded of what that is.
I find this to be specifically necessary when I'm overwhelmed by stress and I have to pull an all-nighter to finish an assignment or when I start doubting that I'll be able to get a job when I get out of college. In those moments, I need to take a step back to remember why I love television and why I decided to go into the industry in the first place.
For me, the best way to do that is to find scenes that inspire me, and over the summer, I was lucky enough to find a specific scene that does this exceptionally well by taking me right back to the first time I realized I wanted to study television.
That scene is the “Running Up That Hill” scene in “Stranger Things” season 4. In this scene, Max (Sadie Sink) is trying to get away from the claws of Vecna (Jamie Campbell) and her friends Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) and Steve (Joe Keery) help her escape Vecna’s curse by playing her favorite song: “Running Up That Hill” by Kate Bush.
The whole point of the scene is that the song gets through to Max's subconscious, which helps her snap out of the trance she's in and fight back against the bad guy trying to kill her. Visually, this is represented by a hole that opens up in the Upside Down, showing her the literal way out.
I like to picture that scene doing the same thing to me. It’s like I have this window that allows me to see past my doubts, and I feel exhilarated and fall back in love with television all over again.
In my biggest moments of uncertainty, I can count on that scene to give me perspective and convince me that I made the right choice. Watching it, I'm reassured that I'm doing what I'm meant to do and the rest I'll figure out along the way.
All in all, I think doubts in college are a normal part of our journey as we grow into ourselves, but it's always good to remember why we chose our careers in the first place. It's necessary for us to be able to go back to that initial spark of joy in our moments of doubt so we can get through them and keep going.
