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forestwater87 · 4 years

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Your library info is incredibly cool and helpful but I have a bit of a specific question. I kinda did badly in college and continue to do badly (less than 3.0 gpa) and have been completing it very slowly. I failed a few classes due to not doing the work while unmedicated. But archival work is one of the few things I can see myself loving to do. Do I have a chance for grad school, or even getting into it?

I’m sorry you’ve had that experience! That really stinks, and I’m impressed that you’re still working so hard to get past that with everything you’ve gone through. It says a lot about your character and work ethic (which can work to your advantage; see #1 below).

I have to admit, I’m not positive how helpful I can be; I’m very bad at most things, but my one talent seems to be getting good grades, so I don’t have personal experience with maneuvering academic struggles. I’m also not an admissions rep, though I do work in a (community) college so maybe I’m a little more familiar than the average joe? And I did work for our grad school’s library/archives department, though I wasn’t exactly privy to their acceptance decisions because I was a glorified secretary, but . . . well, who knows? Take all of this with a grain of salt, because I’m a big dum-dum, but maybe something here will be helpful.

Or maybe someone super smart will rb this with a ton of useful info. That’s the dream!

Also, a lot of this is coming from a Princeton Review article about literally this topic, if you want a less personal and meandering version of the below tips.

TL;DR Forest’s Non-Expert Recommendations for Grad School Without the Best GPA:

Acknowledge it in your communications with the school, and maybe even your application. They’re going to see those grades anyway, so it’s not like more context is a bad thing.

Take more classes, especially ones related to archives and records administration, and nail those.

Kick the GRE’s ass and give a really good application overall.

Experience! Related experience!!!

Get to know the school you’re interested in -- and make sure they know you.

1. I’ll admit, based on a quick glance through some of the archival programs in the U.S., it does look like a 3.0 GPA is just about the baseline for admittance, which isn’t the best news. (Unless you manage to get a 3.0 by the time you graduate, in which case you’re pretty much good for most schools.) My suggestion there would be, whether or not you can bump your grades up with current and future classes, sharing some info -- to your level of comfort -- about your situation in your cover letter/application: acknowledge the grades issue, explain the reason, and illustrate how you’ve improved since then. Even if your final GPA isn’t all that high, it’ll prime the admissions folks to look at it with the understanding that you had a handicap. Your grades are a story over time, and I imagine if you can show improvement and draw their attention to that via a cover/recommendation letter(s), that could be really useful.

2. Obviously, the easiest answer -- to say, not to do! -- is just “get your grades up.” Which is . . . not terribly helpful. The good news there is that the more classes you ace the better your average will be, so if you can afford (literally, in time, money, or spoons) to take some extra courses, you can drag that score up. Especially if you focus on courses related to archives -- English, History, Political Science, Public Administration, Computer Science, Data Analysis, etc. -- and blast those to smithereens, it looks like it won’t necessarily matter as much if you didn’t nail, say, calculus or physics.

3. That above linked post is . . . well, yes, it’s from Reddit, but it does seem pretty good overall. Another recommendation it mentions is to do really well on the GRE; I talked a little bit about the GRE in my last post, and you can get tons of practice tests and other study material on their site; when I took the test back in 2015, you got the study material for free when you signed up to take the exam, but I’m not sure what the situation is there nowadays. That test is a big bucket of not-fun, but I can almost guarantee any program you look at will want it. In addition to being required in most programs, a really impressive score can encourage admissions folks to overlook your grades. (Note: this is basically true for any part of your application. If your resume, cover letter, recommendations, test scores, etc. are particularly banging, it can overcome deficiencies in other areas.)

4. Girl (or boy, or both, or none of the above), if you can volunteer, intern, or work somewhere relevant, not only do have an awesome potential reference in your supervisor/coworkers, but it looks REALLY GOOD on an application. Obviously now’s not a great time for this, considering the whole pandemic thing, but as stuff starts to open take a look at museums, historical societies, and libraries in your area. See if anyone needs help. The more experience you have, the more you’ll have to talk about in your cover letter, the more you’ll have to make your resume stand out, and the more you’ll be prepared for the actual program and life beyond. I cannot recommend getting some volunteer experience (or paid work, if you can swing it) highly enough.

5. Like most of what’s available, this is a bit dependent on your spoons, time, and maybe even money, but the sooner you can develop a relationship with the folks in the archives school/department you’re interested in, the better. Email them with literally this question; they’ll have a much more informed and specific-to-their-program answer for you, and might have some good advice. Schedule a tour (again, prioritizing your safety and those around you). Ask for an interview with the department head or a faculty member. Call with your questions. Ask about classes you might be able to take outside of the actual program to improve your chances of acceptance. We had students in our program who took a certain number of credits as a non-degree student, and then transferred into the program on the strength of those earlier classes; they were usually people whose grades or test scores weren’t up to snuff, so they could get a start while preparing to apply to the degree program. And in general, if the people deciding whether or not you get to go to school there know your name, your face, and your story, your application is going to get a lot more -- and more generous -- consideration than if they don’t know you from a hole in the ground. If nothing else, you’ll get a lot more useable information than I can possibly give you, and you’ll learn more about the program and the field to better make a game plan for your future.

I hope some of this is helpful! I wish I could say you don’t have a bit of an uphill battle because a pretty significant weight is put on GPA. It’s understandable to an extent -- they want to make sure you’ll be able to handle the courseload before you start -- but it poses an extra challenge for people who are already in difficult circumstances. Definitely make sure you talk to your advisor and the academic folks at your current school as well; there’s a chance that they’ll have some advice or even access to some resources you weren’t aware of that’ll make your current grade situation improve.

Good luck! It sounds like this could be a great path for you, and even if you have to take a bit of a roundabout way to get there, that additional experience and time will help you be more prepared for just about anything ANY grad school program or job could throw at you. I believe in you, and I’m here if you need to ask, chat, or vent.

#ask forest #archives #archival studies #i wish i was an admissions person so i could give a more useful answer #but all i have is my personal experience and the ability to google #and that's what we're going with here #changelingirl

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thelondonfilmschool · 7 years

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INTERVIEW with Newcastle-based and one-of-a-kind filmmaker: Benjamin Bee

Writer/Director Benjamin Bee graduated from London Film School in 2015 and moved back to his home town of Newcastle Upon Tyne, where he’s continued to hone the unique brand of personal- tragi-comedy which has seen his films screened at some of the world’s biggest film festivals and attracted the likes of Mike Leigh to his Crowdfunding videos. Ben turns his own life story into art, and it’s not hard to see why – within minutes of meeting him I’d been told an anecdote involving an axe, a crazed lunatic and a carton of banana milkshake. Below is the publishable version of Ben’s take on the North-South divide, his time at LFS and what it is that makes his ‘bonkers’ stories so universal.

S.M: Can you tell me a bit about your life before applying to London Film School?

B.B: I left school in Newcastle when I was 14 without any qualifications, and then I went to an access to college course. They did photography and had an old, broken VHS video camera, and with the people that I met there we started making comedy, stupid little films. They were unscripted, and weirdly I used that to get into the University of Westminster to do Contemporary Media Practice. That was in 2002, and then at the end of that course I made a short film called The Plastic Toy Dinosaur, which was produced by Rob Watson who’s an NFTS producing grad who’s doing really well now. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, I wrote it when I was 21 and I directed it when I was 22. I moved back to Newcastle and started working in a bar, but I hated it and I was miserable and the only thing I realised I had was this short film. I didn’t know about anything, I didn’t even know Cannes or Sundance existed.

So, I just started entering it in places that I found and one of them was the BBC3 New Filmmaker of the Year Award. There were tons of submissions and they selected it down to the last ten. It was actually a really good year – Alice Lowe had written and starred in one of them, and Sean Conway had a film as well, he writes for Ray Donavan now. It was nice because people started to screen the film and it seemed like they liked it and it resonated with audiences, but I still had no idea what I was doing and I was incredibly naïve. I mean, seriously dyslexic and had the reading and writing age of an 8-year-old. Not going to school probably didn’t help. So, I was kind of lost. I started working a theatre box office and I worked, like, 60 hours a week and tried to save money. And then I saw a Skillset bursary advertised. I’d always looked at LFS but I couldn’t afford the fees, but eventually after I’d saved some money from my job I applied and I got the bursary.

S.M: What did applying for that involve?

B.B: It’s based on previous work and it’s means tested so you basically have to be poor and talented, or at least fake them into believing that you have some form of talent (laughs). I think I had something to say, coming from a slightly different background, and all my stories are weirdly personal. You go in front of a panel and when I got called back I literally cried like a small child. And then I went to LFS! It was interesting and difficult and there were people from so many different walks of life. I learnt the craft of filmmaking – I tried to eat up everything.

The most important thing for me was the people – you’re surrounded by people who are really passionate about film. It’s two years surrounded by people who’ll put a lot of effort in, and I met a lot of people who had a lot of fun making films that I’m really proud of. I did a film called Step Right Up when I was there, which was my Term 4 exercise. We had 36 minutes of film stock to make a nine-minute film and it was screened at 40 film festivals. We got long-listed for the BAFTA, which means we were down to the last 10 or 15, which had never been done before by a fourth term film. It was huge.

S.M: What do you think it was about that film that made it so successful?

B.B: I make comedies and they’re personal. I’ve never really struggled with getting films into festivals because I don’t try to make arduous bulls**t. It’s personal, and also I’m not the most masculine man but I know lots of masculine men who do have feelings, and everybody has a shared experience of feelings and pain so there’s nothing that makes even the most masculine, awful guy not sensitive. A lot of my films are about paternal bonds or absent father figures, because my dad left and he was an utter c***. So, I’ve got a lot of things like that, that kind of resonate.

My new one’s about something that genuinely happened, which was when my dad left when I was five and my mum decided to take me and my brother out of school and take us to Metroland, which is a theme park in Newcastle. My brother went on the dodgems but I was too little, so I had to go on the merry-go-round. It was amazing, and I was on a big white horse going round and round. Every time I’d come round I’d see my mum just stood there in floods and floods of tears, and then I’d go past her, and I could see my brother having the best time ever. That’s an analogy for my relationships with my siblings! I think if you say things that are deeply personal then they’re always going to do much better than things that aren’t you. When I started in term one and term two, I started trying to make stuff to look more “intelligent”, and then I realised that it wasn’t making me at all happy. So, by term four I made something ridiculous and by graduation I made a film called Sebastian which was a horror comedy which was also a bit nuts.

S.M: Was it always your plan to go back to Newcastle after graduation?

B.B: The day I handed my grad film in I went for a meeting to direct a pilot taster for Baby Cow, Steve Coogan and Henry Normal’s company. I got that, and I brought Yiannis (Manolopoulos, fellow LFS student and cinematographer) in, it was written by a friend of mine, Dan Mersh, who was also in Step Right Up, Plastic Toy Dinosaur, Sebastian and Mordechai. And that was really good because I got to meet Henry Normal, who was the managing director of the company. He’d written the Royle Family, Mrs Merton, he’d produced some of my fave TV shows, including the Mighty Boosh … He loved it. but Channel 4 didn’t pick it up. Then I moved back to Newcastle, in 2015, and broke my ankle running for a train! I was in a cast for over a year.

Then I applied to the Jewish Film Fund for my film Mordechai, I’m not actually Jewish but the film’s subject is. It’s doing really well, it’s got into Palm Springs, BFI London Film Festival, and various others. It’s about these identical twins, one of which has left the community and one of whom has stayed at home. There’s an ultra-orthodox community in Gateshead and it’s quite insular and interesting. So, I developed a story about, what if one of them had left and then had to come home for a reason? The dad dies and the other brother comes home and he has to go and pick him up. They’ve got very different life choices – one brother’s dressed in black and the other turns up wearing tie-dyed hippy shit. He’s still Jewish but in his own way. Mordechai is really happy and charming and Daniel, who stayed at home, is a bit more down-trodden and miserable. Then Mordechai drops dead and Daniel makes the decision to body swap and becomes Mordechai and goes to his own funeral. It comes out the end quite positive but it’s also quite emotional!

S.M: You work a lot with producer Maria Caruana Galizia – is she someone you met through LFS?

B.B: No, she’s from Malta. She moved to Newcastle after living in Scotland for a while (I think), and there’s very few producers here. I met her at a networking event – she liked something I’d made, I liked something she’d made and we just decided to try and apply for stuff. She’s fu***ng awesome, super talented and incredibly hardworking. Also, she puts up with me…

S.M: Do you find that being based up in Newcastle has its pros and cons?

B.B: It really does. The benefits are that you can shoot anywhere for dead cheap but crewing’s impossible because every good member of crew’s doing Vera or The Dumping Ground. There’s swings and roundabouts. It’s beautiful, and has a better quality of life but there is definitely a massive divide. All the work’s in London, all the agents are there.

S.M: Do you manage to make a living out of the work you’re doing at the moment?

B.B: I’m a very cheap human being. It’s difficult when you start out because a lot of the stuff that you’re doing, like the shorts, aren’t going to make any money unless you start winning prize money. I’m at the stage now where it’s a little bit easier because I can apply for funding for development from the BFI etc. That’s what I’m applying for at the moment. I’m doing a project with Henry Normal, a documentary on him and his poetry. I’m also just finishing Metroland and I’m really, really happy with it, but I’ve got no idea how it’s going to go down ‘cause it’s a bit mental.

S.M: How did you get Mike Leigh to appear in the crowdfunding promo?

B.B: He pops up in it, and basically the whole joke is that the film’s kind of like Weekend at Bernie’s, but imagine Weekend at Bernie’s if it was directed by Mike Leigh. You see the door open and it’s Mike Leigh going “Ben, can you stop phoning and emailing me and if you give me another copy of Weekend at Bernie’s …” (laughs).

I sent him an email going, “Hi Mike! Creative England are insisting that I do Crowdfunding and I really don’t wanna do it, so instead of making a video in which everybody’s positive, I want to make a video where everybody’s really negative about the experience.” He said yes without questioning it for a second… When I shot the video with Mike it was me, Yiannis and Eoin Maher, who did Filmmaking at LFS as well, and Mike who was just really hilarious. It was a lot of fun. Mike’s always been incredibly kind and supportive. He’s got a really good sense of humour. It’s the thing I love about his work to be honest.

S.M: Have you found it cathartic making such personal work based on your own life?

B.B: Unless you’re very good at what you do, this is just my advice, you can hide everything but what you do has to at some point be personal and resonate. Deconstruct any movie ever, like every movie Wes Anderson ever made is basically about his father walking out on his family, even though you don’t always realise it. It’s all about masculinity. It’s that thing that all your faults are your strongest features. I definitely find it therapeutic and I definitely think you deal with stuff. Spielberg says that it’s the only job where you get paid for therapy. I think that’s a great quote because it’s true in a way. Especially if you can’t afford therapy!

S.M: What do you think was the most important thing that LFS taught you?

B.B: The main revelation was that, whenever anybody goes into anything, doesn’t matter if it’s school, college or university, everybody comes in with a competitive nature that they’re going to be the best. Being competitive with yourself and wanting to make the best work is amazing, that’s the best way to be. But anybody else, whether they’re a director or whatever, should be your friends and your peer group, people that will help you. You basically have a support network with other filmmakers. That was really helpful, because it felt like you had a cheerleading squad and you could also do it for other people and you’d be really grateful. And that’s the industry – you’re not really in competition because nobody’s going to make the same film as you. You learn that very quickly at LFS because there’s people making such different work and you can really appreciate it. Then those people can come and work and collaborate on something you’re making, and you make something different and everybody learns from each other. Definitely the international vibe really helps as well. I was one of very few Brits and that was really nice, because obviously in Newcastle it’s mostly just people from there. In my term I had Yiannis from Greece, Pauline who was French, Rodrigo who was Mexican, Habib who’s American … it was really nice. I enjoyed it. Everybody’s great! Working with happy, positive people who feel comfortable in a nice environment is what makes the best work. And I think that’s what comes from having so many passionate people at LFS. It was a life-changing opportunity.

#mike leigh #filmmaking #weekendatbernies #filmstudies #wes anderson #creativeskillset #lfsorguk #gateshead #newcastle #steve coogan #babycow #metroland #sundance #rob watson #sean conway #dyslexia #london #bfi #jewish film fund

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