Q: Why did you choose Vassar?
A: I did a lot of theater in high school, and I thought I would major in drama, so I was looking for schools with really strong theater programs. I’d lived in California since I was nine, but I wanted a change of pace, so I thought I’d go back East. I have family in Washington, D.C., and Boston and New York, so I figured there’d always be someone there in case of emergency or homesickness. Vassar was just one of the East Coast schools I was interested in because it has a really strong theater program. And then I got in and I visited. I really liked the campus, and I thought, this is probably the right thing.
Q: But you had doubts?
A: I was kind of nervous about the location. I had always lived in or near a big city, and I thought, okay, what am I going to do if I get sick of being on campus? But I’ve kind of really grown to love the area and the Hudson Valley — so much so that I’m thinking of sticking around for a year or so after graduation.
Q: You ended up majoring in film instead of drama — how did that come about?
A: Senior year of high school, my interest started to shift from acting to writing and directing. I wrote a play that included a lot of video clips, and I was having fun, just playing with the video, so I thought, maybe I don’t want to do theater anymore, maybe this is a little more interesting. So when I got to Vassar, I thought, maybe I’ll just check out the Film Department and see what happens, and it ended up clicking.
Q: What’s the best class you’ve taken at Vassar?
A: Oh! I don’t know if I can pick just one! One of my favorites was Documentary: History and Aesthetics with Mia Mask, who eventually became my thesis advisor. She’s great. I’ve always liked documentaries, but I had never really thought about documentary film from a theoretical perspective. Documentaries give the illusion of being “the truth,” but of course they’re not — they’re someone’s version of the truth.
And then, last year, I took a class with Sarah Kozloff, called Romantic Comedy. And that was interesting, too, because we don’t necessarily take romantic comedies seriously — they’re fluff, they’re chick flicks, whatever. But in this class we looked at the history of comedy, going back to classical theory and the Greeks and then Shakespeare and up through different eras of American cinema. Kozloff is the hardest professor I’ve ever had, but she’s phenomenal. I would keep taking classes with her forever if I could because she’s just such a character — she’s like a walking encyclopedia.
And then — Narrative Writing with Kiese Laymon, the coolest guy ever. He’s really supportive and really interesting to talk to. Every time I had a conference with him, we’d always end up getting into a really interesting tangential conversation that left me thinking for days.
Q: Tell me about your internship with Oh My Productions.
A: I kind of stubbed into that by accident my junior year. I wanted to do field work and get an internship in the City, but I waited until the last minute, so the Field Work Office said, “That’s a good idea maybe for next year; right now it’s not going to happen.” But then they said there was a local filmmaker who was working on a documentary and looking for interns, and they put me in touch with her — Joy Reed — and I’ve been working with her ever since.
I started out doing research and administrative stuff — calling various publications to get copyright clearance for things she wanted to put in the film. And then she had me start helping with some of the editing, and I learned really fast, and as time went on, that’s pretty much all I’ve been doing. Editing. Which turns out to be something that I would like to do for a living someday! And which, again, is something I never thought would come out of a random field work placement!
Q: You’re also co-president of SASA (South Asian Students’ Alliance). How did that come about?
A: Growing up, I had kind of gotten used to being, if not the only South Asian kid in my class, one of three at the most. In high school, it was just me and one other kid. We formed our own version of SASA, which was just the two of us screening Bollywood movies and wandering into Berkeley, because they have a pretty large South Asian population, to check out the stores and the restaurants. So I was kind of expecting Vassar to be similar, because it’s a private school and it’s on the East Coast — not like Berkeley which is 45% Asian. I wasn’t aware of SASA before I got here, but there was another Indian girl in my student fellow group, and the two of us decided to check it out together. Coming from not really having that kind of community around me, it was nice to be able to participate in one.
Q: You’re also a literary editor for Asian Quilt?
A: That was another sort of random thing. Sophomore year, I got an email that they were looking for literary editors, and I’d been an editor of my high school’s literary magazine, so I thought, okay, I have some experience. I went in and had an interview and they gave me the job. I’ve met a lot of really interesting people through Asian Quilt. We’ll get really interesting, creative work from people we thought we knew — like, oh, we didn’t know you were a writer, that’s really cool!
Q: So what’s the most important thing you’ve learned at Vassar?
A: This might not be my final answer, but as of now, I’d say that I’ve learned to take risks a lot more — everything from getting involved in the extracurricular stuff like SASA, to working for this small documentary company, to just having professors who pushed me to be more vocal in class.
