I’ve decided that I want to make further use of my website and write about the experiences of the Fulbright journey that lies ahead of me and the start of my professional video journalism career. ‘Cuz baby… we just getting started.
It’s been five months since I learned I received a Fulbright Open Study award to travel to and live in Brazil for 9 months and shoot my documentary. My main goals for this project are to give it all my expertise, accuracy, and dedication, and to do justice for the Afro-Brazilian community in Salvador da Bahia. My personal goals are to become completely fluent in Portuguese, embrace love, friendship and family, and connect to my roots. Also I’m gonna start working on my S.M.A.R.T. goals… Regardless, I care about this project a lot and I can already feel myself putting unnecessary pressure on myself, like I usually do.
I leave in February which gives me just a few more months to get my visa approved, secure a university with a journalism or film department to work with, and rent an apartment. I’ll also want to finalize the production schedule, continue to apply for extra grant opportunities, and set up an LLC. I feel like I don’t know how to do any of that, but doing one thing at a time has helped assuage some of my anxieties surrounding this project.
Fulbright has been a dream of mine since freshman year of college. I graduated UNC Chapel Hill in May, and since then I’ve been living with family in Asheville, working and praying that the imposter syndrome goes away. Asheville and the surrounding areas in Western North Carolina have just been hit by a devastating storm, so I’ve started praying about that too.These past few months I’ve found it difficult to absolve the fears I have. It’s hard to think about how large-scale this project is, and how much I care about doing well, without anxiety stopping me in my tracks.
I’ll start to think that what I have to do is way too big. I’ve always been ambitious, but if I’m honest, sometimes I feel like I’m not cut out for any of this. Not just the Fulbright, but the rest of my career goals. How I want to be a music journalist and make documentaries and music videos about and for the biggest influences of our culture. How I want to travel the world and drive social change through my work. How I want to own a production company. What sucks is sometimes it doesn’t matter what anybody says about me either. That I can do it, that it’ll be a life-changing experience, that magic will happen for me in Brazil. While I know these things are true, sometimes I just can’t shake the idea that maybe somehow God made a mistake in granting me this opportunity. I know I’m not alone in my imposter syndrome, and while I’ve had to overcome self-doubt in college, this is the first time I’ve experienced it to such a great extent. I hope that maybe publishing this can empower me in some way by looking back when I’m several months into my grant and I’m living good, safe, creating a great body of work that I’m proud of with a fantastic team, with the resources I need, that I was wrong the whole time. Because God makes no mistakes.
The first time I did a documentary overseas was in Puerto Rico in Spring of 2023. And I was nervoouuussss. I felt like I wasn’t cut out for it, and to no surprise, I put extra pressure on myself to do as much research and language immersion as I could before landing in San Juan. Mind you, I’ve been taking Spanish since the 7th grade. I was only worried because I was just a little out of practice, a little bit far from perfect. As many of my mentors and professors have taught me, perfection isn’t real. These false realities of perfection can actually hold you back. It wasn’t until someone checked me while I was ranting about something when they told me I was acting like this Puerto Rico project was high-stakes. And I was like… are you sure? That was the first time I even realized I was doing it. I remember my friends were so excited for me to go that semester, too, but anytime they asked about that class I shut it right down because I wasn’t tryna talk about it. Like y’all not finna make me nervous right now. Yet they knew I was gonna be just fine. Now my friends say the same stuff today. While a Fulbright is more “high-stakes” than a college journalism class, I’m still certainly putting more pressure on it than I should. Pressure and striving for “perfection” can be a good thing, but in moderation… not too much where you can’t even move. And I gots to move.
I’m going to continue writing about my preparations for Brazil and when I get there, blogging my experiences with creating my documentary. I want a record of my experiences that isn’t just in my journal I keep, but published, somewhere that isn’t hidden, to inspire people who want to follow their dreams, too. As introverted as I can be sometimes, I’ve got to learn to take up space. I’ve got to learn to shine unapologetically. I hope blogging helps me recognize how far I’ve come, how far I’ve still to go, and I hope it motivates me to not ever give up on what makes my heart burn.
More soon. xoxo