In a few sentences, describe your post-Biola work/life journey.

Aside from the natural turbulence associated with college graduation and the prospect of joining the nebulous "workforce," I also had a massive shift in career focus when I left Biola. Before graduation, I'd planned on joining vocational ministry and frankly spent a lot of years preparing in a volunteer capacity for what I'd decided was God's great script for my life. Turns out God wasn't greenlighting that project. So I spent about four years figuring out what I wanted to do while working in management at Orange County Superior Court. My job was essentially to supervise a staff of seven to eight people who, in turn, supervised about 30,000 divorce cases each year in various clerical capacities. Needless to say, I felt like I wanted to do something else with my life. All the while, I'd developed a hobby of making weird little video sketches with my friends for my own amusement. I'd started doing it in high school and pursued it off and on throughout college. In fact, I mentioned that one day to my manager who was in charge of the entire Family Law division for Orange County and she said, "Well then make one for us." So I did. It was a horrible, sad little video about how to get your divorce papers filed. But I made it! And because I did, I finally mustered the courage to ask the bold question, "What if this video thing was like...my whooooole deal?" So I applied for an MFA at USC's School of Cinematic Arts, got accepted, and eventually worked my way into being a professional writer/director.

What's your current occupation, and in what ways did getting a degree in English prepare you for the job?

I'm a full-time writer/director for the comedy website, Cracked. I'm also beginning work with a commercial production company as a director. To be honest there's no substitute for a broad background in literature and philosophy in my field. I use the creative writing skills I started developing at Biola to this very day. It's impossible to be an intelligent communicator of emotions, human experience, and narrative in general without a pretty deep fluency in the literature on which our entertainment apparatus is built. But perhaps most significant, the empathy and critical thinking skills necessary for engaging in the sometimes unwieldy cultural debate were really enhanced by my exposure to the writings and thoughts of people unlike myself. Which, again, started at Biola.

What was a favorite class or experience you had while a Biola English major?

This one is a tie. The creative writing class I took with Paul Buchanan was absolutely formative for me as a writer and thinker. I still use the principles and habits I formed there in the creation of my scripts. He really fostered an environment that was fun, but also one that pursued emotional honesty even when it was a little scary. That's huge in writing at any level. Also, that's where most of the lasting friendships I made at Biola came from. Nearly everybody [from Biola] I'm still in some contact with has some web-like entanglement with that class.

But the other class that really stands out to me was the African American Literature class taught by Dr. Andrea Frankwitz. For me, a middle-class white dude from the suburbs, it was my first real exposure to the worldview of African American people. Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Richard Wright's Uncle Tom's Children, and the writings of W.E.B. DuBois really changed my perspective on the racial injustices that still exist in our culture. Obviously the education is ongoing, but those works and that experience of having my eyes opened are now fundamental to my views.

What about life after college was most surprising to you?

I think it was the discovery that life is mostly devoid of a singular intrinsic narrative. It's unstructured. It's messy. There will be unanticipated, even unearned triumphs. And there will be unmitigated catastrophes that no preparation could curtail. The point is, there's no discernible "way" it has to go. I think being a young Christian, and especially going to a Christian college, you begin to see the narrative of your life through this amalgamated lens that's partially faith-based, partially experience-based, and the rest is just projections of your wishes into a timeline. But what will it actually be? The real answer is you don't know. Some people will go on to manifest exactly the life they planned, and they will say that they knew God's will for them all along. Maybe they're right. Some will have lives that zig when they thought they would zag, plans built and toppling like sandcastles in the changing tides, and when they look back with faith-coated eyes they will see God's hand in it all. And to those I would say, maybe you're right too. It doesn't have to go a certain way. It also doesn't have to be on a timeline forged by other people's expectations, pop culture, internet articles, or misapplied Bible verses. It's not faithless to admit you don't know the answer. It's faithless to assume the answer you made is the only one that's acceptable.

What advice would you give to a current Biolan majoring in English? Or what's something you did in college that later helped you professionally?

Expose yourself to things you don't agree with. Make it a regular practice. Learn how to hear, understand, and even respect people who differ from you. I spent a lot of my college experience reading the works of people who really hated or questioned Christianity. And I've found it incredibly useful. It's provided me with a basic empathy skill set, which pain and aging have further expanded. It's provided me with a logical and emotional infrastructure that helps me relate to people I meet in the world who have very different worldviews from mine. It's made it possible for those people to be my good friends, for them to know I care about them and can understand them. I can talk about life the way they experience it. To me, English literature was always about pursuing the deeper truths of human experience. It's life as lived and pondered by older, smarter, and often deader people than me. So learn about different brands of life and grapple your way to empathy and comprehension. Because every single day of my quasi-adult life has been an exercise in navigating conflicting narratives.

What are you reading?

Not as much as I should. I just read 1984 for the first time, because I was tired of hearing the word "Orwellian" applied to everything and only vaguely understanding what it meant. I'm currently reading In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, because I don't read enough non-fiction. Some other recent reads include Gilead, The Outsider, the poetry of Billy Collins, Ender's Game, The Silmarillion, In Persuasion Nation, Self Help by Lorrie Moore, and others. Dr. Vonk will be disappointed to learn I've gotten 300 pages into War and Peace like five times in the last three years and never carried through yet, but that's on my list. As obvious as it is, I've started reading a lot of graphic novels because that's what everything Hollywood makes is based on now. For those who are comfortable with graphic and challenging subject matter, and I leave that to your own consciences and googling talents to determine, I found 100%, the Saga series, The Watchmen, Scalped, the first 10 or so books of Fables, and especially The Sandman, pretty compelling as literature.

Below, you can watch one of the videos that Adam directed: https://youtu.be/HJ6gNBaTJHw