Take Two! Help me know what is different about my crazy college experience?

One of the direct benefits to my extracurricular lifestyle was an internship this summer.

Today I wrote a blog post about my plans to interview some people in the field of creative nonfiction. To create a space to publish these interviews, I updated my personal blog, Writing Derrick, with a page highlighting some of the interviews I have already conducted.

After doing this, I looked at the list of interviews and was a little surprised at the number and variety, which led me to decide to reframe my project. Instead of creating another outlet for new work, I am going to reflect on the past three years of my personal projects, The Pixar Podcast and The Porch, and the professional and educational destinations they have led me to. Doing so will help me think about what the end-goals for these projects are, and it will hopefully help others who may want to follow a similar path. If I can help someone do something similar, I will be happy.

My plan now is to write a narrative piece that outlines what I have done and how I have done it. As a student (I will be finished with my undergraduate degree this year), I have not always achieved the standard metrics of academic success, but I have enjoyed surprising educational benefits by carving out a space in the ways that I have.

I was telling someone about how The Porch came to be, using language like "circumstances allowed it," and "I was in the right place at the right time," and he startled me by telling me, "What? No -- you weren't just in a place and time, you did something and The Porch exists now." I'm careful not to just praise myself, and I certainly am aware that the work that I have done can be much improved upon -- which I am looking forward to doing -- but I also can admit that I am already at a stage where I have accomplished something.

The question is: what have I accomplished? Because I am so close to my own story, I do not usually see it as particularly unique, and even with my successes, I have often felt the weight and guilt of my academic failures.

So at the risk of sounding incredibly self-important, what seems most unique about the types of projects I have involved myself with? Don't worry, the final piece will include plenty of my failures. But in order to make something useful out of them, I need to see more clearly than I do now also what has made me successful. In other words, tell me what I have succeeded at and I will gladly tell you how I got there.

At this point, the most tangible framework for this narrative is that I have made myself into a case study for Alternative Education. One approach may be to think through the goals of a liberal arts education, and examine how my podcasting and show-producing efforts have given me that experience through a back door.

I will be asking the same questions once I have a draft up of my story, but meanwhile, any direction you can throw my way would be very helpful as I put down my experiences in words.