But, that idea took many hours, a lot of deliberation, and a great amount of collaboration to come to full fruition. We tossed around topics for a few days. Our team pitched idea after idea, but nothing really seemed to stand out. Ultimately, we knew we wanted to challenge ourselves, and we knew we wanted students to drive our project. That's when we started thinking about our own personal lives and the struggles we go through as college students. Olivia is a student-athlete, who sometimes feels as if her abilities in the classroom are overshadowed by the stigma of those who compete athletically. Demi is a dedicated student who works almost 20 hours a week, while still balancing the pressure of doing well in school. And, finally, Zack has to deal with the struggles of school and going home every weekend to visit his family in Chicago.
In thinking of our own stories, we realized that three of us are just a small piece of a much larger picture. We are not the only ones who feel marginalized by our invisible struggles. If we had not talked about this topic, we would not have known what each other was going through. These days, the "typical" student is really anything but "typical." For example, some individuals work multiple jobs to afford their tuition, others are battling with family issues and pain, some feel silenced by the political climate on campus, or some feel judged by the color of their skin. And, more importantly, these individual stories and struggles have impact beyond the classroom. These stories are deep, with many layers, and we hoped to shine a light on individuals who have felt marginalized because they are a-typical. "A-typical" stories can and should be celebrated.
Our key to success? Working together with trust in our abilities as storytellers, videographers, photographers, journalists, people and friends. Together, we built on our strengths and we leveraged our weaknesses. From the very beginning, we knew we didn't want to delegate tasks and leave each other out of the process. Simply put, we were there for each other every step of the way: each photograph we took, each soundbite we recorded, each shot we composed, and each interview we staged. No one ever felt alone, and we are very proud of that. Because of our approach, we were all on the same page throughout the entire project, and we hope that shines through in our work. However, that doesn't mean we didn't have some bumps along the way. We now understand why this project was saved for the end of the semester. We were challenged greatly: in coming up with an idea, in executing our work, in researching a broad topic, and in telling personal and sometimes painful stories. After finishing this project, it's extremely rewarding to look back at our progress thusfar. Less than 3 months ago, we were learning how to use our camera, and now, we are publishing powerful, impactful content across a variety of multimedia platforms. We are so thankful for the lessons we learned over the semester and for the times we failed, because it led us to this. The best part of this project? Getting the chance to enter the worlds of students we didn't know and seeing how similar and different we all are. We definitely achieved our goal: to collaborate together. And guess what? We had fun along the way.