Friends and Family,

The weekly updates are back and ready for action…the action of updating…aw yeah. It’s been 8 weeks since I sent #7, and so I’ve got a lot of ground to cover.

First, the reason for my silence…grad school applications. I have written 11 essays since I last wrote all of you, and it has really taken a lot out of me. Topics have ranged from describing my most emotionally powerful experience to summarizing my life vision in three pages. I didn’t take these tasks lightly, and did a LOT of soul-searching.

I don’t really feel like spouting back everything I discovered about myself right now, since I just spent the last 8 weeks doing that. But what I will do is write the first paragraph of my life vision:

The world is harsh, and there are often no easy answers to life’s difficult questions. But I believe that hope exists even in the darkest corners of human existence, and it is my life purpose to find that hope and communicate it through art.

There you have it folks. I could describe my various ambitions in an infinite number of words, but when it all comes down to it, these two sentences are what I’m here on earth for…not to make sugar-coated art where all of life’s problems are solved in a half an hour…not to make cynical art where life’s problems are beyond solving…but to make hopeful art, where we see the harshness of the world, but where hope shines through it like a beacon in the night.

Even if I don’t end up making it into USC or UCLA – which is a very real possibility since I think they accept only 50 students out of 2,000 applicants – I still would consider the time spent working on my applications valuable, for it helped me learn so much about my passions, abilities, and my views of art and the world.

I learned a lot about the nature of hope, I’ll try and share more about my discoveries in a later update, but not in this one.

Other news…I suppose you all would like the long-promised description of my internship. Well, Sodium Entertainment has been great for me. I think I mentioned this earlier, but the place is both a production office in the final stages of completing their first feature film, and a post-production sound studio working on the sound for the film.

I am learning so much there about both the business and creative sides of filmmaking. By far, the coolest thing I have done this entire semester was spend 11 hours this Friday recording Foley with the sound studio. Foley is when you create the sound (other than dialog) that is seen on screen – when people walk or do any other actions in films, there are Foley artists who actually record the sounds of their footsteps and other actions at a later date. The most interesting sound I got to make on Friday was the sound of a person slipping and hitting her head on a counter. What made this sound you ask? Celery. Who would’ve known? Often times, the things that appear to make sound on screen are not actually made by those things in real life. For example, in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the rat sounds in the sewer are actually made by chickens.

Well, the end of the semester approaches fast, and since I’ve basically done no homework for the past 8 weeks – instead dedicating all of my time to these grad school essays – I’ve got a lot of catch up to do in my classes before all my final projects are due in three weeks. Please pray that I will use my time efficiently, and that I will get my life back in order. I can safely say that I do not have a sleeping schedule right now, as a lot of all-nighters have messed that up.

Quite honestly, I’m ready to be done with the semester right now, but just need to push on a little farther. I’m looking forward to coming back to Taylor second semester. LA has been good, but I’m ready for the country again for a little while. City life has worn me down a little bit for the past five months.

Call me crazy, but I am also extremely pumped to return to snow. Seriously, enough of this warm weather! I was just looking through some photos last night from my Spring Break trip to Russia last year, and I just got excited when I saw the snow. There’ something clean and invigorating about it.

OK, I’m going to wrap this up now with two comments: one, since I’m going to have to work pretty hard these next few weeks, I might have time to write another update, but no promises. However, at the very least, I will send a final update after the semester is over, and I will also continue to send updates periodically in the future, just to keep everyone current on what’s going on with my life.

Two, I’d love to hear from you guys if anything in this e-mail sparks some thoughts, but I probably won’t have much time for writing responses these next few weeks, even though I’d love to do so. Just so you know…

Well, take care everyone. Bismarck friends, I look forward to seeing you at Christmas – Taylor friends, I look forward to seeing you in January – everyone else, I look forward to seeing you whenever I see you – myself, I see you right now…random gripe: there are way too many mirrors in my apartment…seven on the walls of my room alone.

In Christ,
Dave/David/Shabotz

P.S. Two friends from Taylor came out to visit a couple of weeks ago, and it was just a breath of fresh air being called Shabotz again. I’m getting a little sick of just being called Dave all the time. Shabotz has so much more character. Maybe I could officially change my name to Shabotz…

P.P.S. Have I spoken of changing my name in a weekly update before? I feel like I have. Sorry if I’m repeating myself.

P.P.P.S. There we go – I’ve filled my P.S. quota for the e-mail :)

P.P.P.P.S. Emoticons are great! LOL