Hey everyone. My name is Juju, and I'm a sophomore at Bennington. My pronouns are she, her, hers, and I'm from Northampton, Massachusetts. So I'm here to talk today a little bit about my experience at Bennington. I'm going to talk a bit about my plan process, what I study at Bennington, and a previous field work term I did that has really influenced my studies at Bennington.

So first of all, I just wanted to thank everyone for being so understanding about everything going digitally. I know that when I was applying to Bennington, I really was looking forward to my tour, and it really helped me kind of solidify how I felt about Bennington, and it allowed me to envision myself existing there, which I think is really important whenever you're making a big change in your life and moving somewhere new. So I know that that is really disappointing and really hard, but thank you for being so understanding and the admissions team is really doing everything they can to mirror that experience at Bennington works and real life campus tours online. And luckily, we saw this coming before we went remote, and we made a lot of content on campus preparing for this. So thank you again and we hope you hang in there with us.

So, just to talk a little bit about my plan at Bennington, my plan is currently in French Language Studies, generally, and Video. So I actually came to Bennington knowing that I did want to study and pursue these two things. Sometimes people's plans change drastically, and they totally shift gears and study something else, but it's also okay to stick with what you know you like. And I think my classes at Bennington in these two disciplines challenge me to approach them differently. So in a way, my studies shifted, but it's generally still under Film and Video. And so the first Film class I took it Beddington, which was really influential, was just Intro to Video with a teacher, Mariam Ghani, who is now also on my plan committee. And I really enjoyed this class because when I first was enrolled in it, I was really nervous, expecting everyone to be these seasoned filmmakers, but that wasn't the case at all. And what I really enjoyed about the class is that anyone of any level was welcome. And because of the constraints given for the video prompts, I think it kind of helped everyone develop their own style, no matter where they were in their trajectory of being an aspiring filmmaker. So it was really interesting to see everyone's styles shift and change and just get better together as a group.

And so then fast forward to this fall, Mariam Ghani was on my plan committee, as well as Kate Purdie, who is a video teacher who's retiring this year, unfortunately, and then one of the French faculty members, Noel. So I was really happy with this plan committee because they know me really well, and I know them really well, and so having them there while I was writing my plan before, during and after, was always so helpful because they knew what I wanted to study, and they helped me make that make sense to other people and not just me, which is really important.

So then I knew I wanted to do a field work term within the film world this year. So this past field work term, I was in New York City, and I was interning at the Filmmakers Cooperative, which is located in Midtown, and I was really lucky enough to get free housing. So I was interning there and working, actually cleaning analog film. And so this is when I became really interested in analog filmmaking, because at Bennington, it's mostly digital. So this inspired me to kind of find a way to do this at Bennington, even though the classes don't exist right now. And so now I'm working on trying to make there be some kind of analog filmmaking presence on campus with other students who are interested in this. So that's just one way that this past field work term really inspired me and influenced my studies.

So that's all I have to say right now, just a little sneak peek into that stuff, but I would love to discuss some of that more in depth with any of you if you want to reach out to me through my email, juliac@bennington.edu. I'd be happy to talk to you there or through Xeni. So thank you again. I'm wishing you the best of luck during the rest of your college application process, and I hope to see you on campus next fall. Thank you. Bye.