Graduation!!!

Over the last two years, I've been on this crazed, hectic journey to keep up with my regular life all while earning a BFA in Creative Writing for Entertainment at Full Sail University.  It's a very new program and one of only three BFA degrees in the country that focuses on writing for entertainment.

Yesterday at 8:30am, I graduated with four classmates who comprise the first ever on-campus section of the class. (Two online classes graduated before us - whatever...)  As the recipient of the Advanced Achiever Award, I was selected to give the graduation speech for my class.

The opening kind of terrified a few of the faculty members - but over all, it went pretty well...

Wow!  I’d like to thank the Academy, my manager and all my home-girls still shaking what their mammas gave them at the Skyway lounge…  Oops!

*Diablo Cody’s Oscar speech from Juno?  What am I doing with that?

 

Oscar on the horizon? You never know! And I've never been above a little 'foreshadowing!'
*Not REALLY the opening to Diablo Cody's Oscar speech!

  

 

…But in case any of you are concerned – don’t worry.  I could never be the ‘next Diablo Cody’ because I could never make a living in adult Entertainment for one very important reason – as my mother, classmates and ALL my teachers can now attest, I have absolutely no idea how to behave like an adult…

Case in point - Right now someone off stage is checking her notes and saying – uh oh… this is NOT the speech Hillary J. Walker submitted Sunday afternoon.

And she is right.

This isn’t the speech.  I wrote a speech - a solid speech. It was kind of cute in the beginning, gave some shout outs to my classmates, and took an inspirational turn into the home stretch where I thanked everyone responsible for my success.  Ta –Da!

But I realized after I turned it in, that I didn’t want to ‘deliver a speech,’ because I’ve spent the last two years of my life at this school learning to be a storyteller.  So the only fair thing for me to do is to tell you a story.

It’s about a deeply flawed protagonist who came here 10 years ago and really really wanted to make movies on the big screen. But after going on the tour, and even reserving a seat in the film production AS program, she just couldn’t figure out how to make it work. And she knew being a set PA wasn’t REALLY her dream.

So she enlisted in the Army National Guard and became a broadcast journalist. Also – not really her dream.

Then one Christmas, just two weeks after her stupid ex-husband drove away in a glistening yellow pick up truck, her ‘not quite dream’ turned into an actual nightmare when she found out she had cancer in her left big toe.

It’s amazing what a big pain in the butt toe-cancer can be.  In fact it almost killed our hero, but she decided she wanted to stick around – not to stick it to her idiot ex (who totally deserved it), or to even find new love and live happily ever after. She fought to live because there were so many stories living inside her head that she still wanted to tell.  There were so many words she’d never write and worlds she’d never create if she just gave up over one freakishly tenacious toe tumor…

In case any of you are wondering, this isn’t some script I’ve been working on for class.  This is my story.

And eventually, as John Cleese so elegantly said in Monty Python’s Holy Grail – "I got bettah…"

But I didn’t know how to get great – Until two years ago when I came back to tour Full Sail with an old friend who was chasing a new dream of her own. And I found out about the shiny new Creative Writing for Entertainment BFA.

That Sunday afternoon, I saw Garry Jones standing right here on this stage daring me to follow my dream – The very dream that kept me alive during the darkest point in my life.

And that moment I knew that someday I wanted to stand on this stage and dare others to follow their dreams too.

I’m not great yet.  But I made it to this stage.  And thanks to family members who’ve shown me more support than I deserve – thanks to teachers who boldly went where no curriculum has ever gone before – thanks to Program Director Noelani Cornell who has discovered that teaching writers entails more ‘cat-herding’ than a Siegfried and Roy show – and of course, thanks to Garry Jones, who dares each one of us to become the stars he believes we all can be – thanks to each of those people – I know how to get ‘great.’

Allison, Brittney, Micah and yes – even especially Garrett, you know how to get there too.  And I promise to help you each remember that, if you promise to remind me from time to time.

Thank you all for being here today to celebrate with me and the rest of Full Sail’s first ever Campus class to graduate from the Creative Writing for Entertainment BFA program.

Congratulations to all my fellow December 2013 grads! Guys - we totally got this!