Translator: Patricia Martínez López Reviewer: Mukaddes Özcan
I've always been a straight-A student.
I've always loved school.
I think it's because there's a clear path to achievement,
with grades, tests and graduation.
Or maybe it's because it feels like a box that I fit into -
it's cozy and comforting.
But that comfort doesn't last forever.
This is a photograph of me,
graduating from one of the top photojournalism departments in the country
When my friends and I walked across the stage,
they all had jobs and internships, and major publications,
like the New York Times, the LA Times, The Washington Post...
But when I walked across the stage, I didn't have a plan.
I had no idea what I wanted my life to look like postgraduation.
So I moved in with my boyfriend,
we closed our eyes and picked a place on the map
and wound up in Portland Maine.
(Laughter)
I've read a lot of outside magazine articles,
and I became a stereotypical millenial:
college educated,
I had internships and study-abroad programs under my belt,
and I was working as a server, right down the street.
I was realizing that the comfort of school didn't exist in the real world.
During this time, my mother told me -
"You do what you love when no one's watching"
And so as I started to figure out
what I wanted to do with my life after graduation,
I started to ask myself what was pulling at my heartstrings.
When no one was watching, I was listening to a lot of podcasts.
If you don't know what a podcast is, it's basically a radio show online,
there are 350 thousand of them.
In a world where there's so much noise, these audio stories struck me,
because they made me fall in love with people
whose faces I would never see, and whom I would never meet.
And I decided I wanted to be a creator of what I was consuming.
I wanted to be a radio journalist and producer.
The only problem was that I had never made a radio story before in my life.
And so, all of a sudden, there was a huge gap
between where I was and where I wanted to be,
and I didn't know how to bridge those.
In photojournalism they teach you, "If you want to be a photographer,
you can't tell people; you have to show people".
So I decided to take that same approach
and place it on becoming a radio journalist and producer.
At the end of 2014 in December,
instead of making a list of New Year's resolutions,
I decided to make my own grad school program,
equipped with a syllabus that was seven pages long.
In this syllabus was a thesis project, a podcast, called Millennial.
Millennial is about maneuvering your 20s postgraduation
through the eyes of one person - Me.
It was a means to an end,
I wanted to use Millennial as a portfolio piece
so that I could get a job in the industry.
So as I was serving and working on this podcast
and having another part time job,
I was also sending out applications to fellowships, internships and jobs
all over the country.
I applied to this "American Life", and was a top finalist,
but then got rejected;
I applied to the Krok Fellowship with NPR, was flown out to DC in interview,
and then was rejected;
I applied to a podcasting company in New York city for an internship,
and then was rejected -
because they told me I was overqualified.
But every single time, I fell back on Millennial.
I kept making the podcast despite all of these disappointments.
Until finally, I got a call.
It was from New Hampshire Public Radio.
They had listened to the podcast and they were offering me a job
as a full-time producer.
When I got this call, I felt like I had arrived,
like that same sensation I had when I was graduating,
I felt it at this moment.
I felt like I had graduated into adulthood,
and I had found another box that I fit into,
that was comfortable and secure,
and came with a 401K, salary, benefits...
And I should have stopped making Millennial,
like I said it was a means to an end -
this was the end.
But I couldn't stop making it.
I realized during my few months at my job that
this box I had worked so hard to fit into, had a ceiling on it.
There were limitations, things I could and could not do,
and for the first time I realized that
in my closet, where I was making Millennial,
(Laughter)
there was so much freedom.
So I started to live this double life
between my full-time job, making this passion project.
I'd wake up at 4 o'clock in the morning and work on the podcast,
then I'd go to work, and I'd come home, have dinner,
and keep working on the podcast until 11 or sometimes 3 am,
and then I'd repeat the cycle.
I was doing it for me, because I loved it.
At a moment when I thought that no one was listening,
it turned out everyone was listening.
At the end of December in 2015, I got a Twitter notification that
The Atlantic had created a list of top 50 podcast throughout the whole world,
and Millennial was nº14.
(Applause and cheerings)
During this time, sponsors, companies were also contacting me to become sponsors,
and pretty soon Millennial was growing at a rate that
I couldn't keep up with having a full-time job,
and so I found myself at a crossroads, between taking this traditional path -
fitting into this box that felt really comfortable and cozy -
or taking a leap, and possibly
risking this comfortable path for something that I loved
and committing myself to a full-time.
After months of thought,
I went to my boss and told her I was quitting.
I knew that if I didn't pursue Millennial full-time,
I would regret it for the rest of my life.
This is what I came home to on my last day of work -
my boyfriend made it for me,
in celebration of taking this big leap.
I grew up with a phrase from a buddhist philosopher, Daisaku Ikeda,
and it goes: "When you commit yourself and you make a big determination,
and you move in that direction,
every cell and nerve in your body will start to move in that direction".
And that's what happened.
I decided to commit to Millennial full-time,
and a week after I quit, I got a call from a network in Boston,
and then I got another call from a network in New York city;
they both wanted to pick up the show.
In May of this year,
I proudly announced Millennial as a 14th addition to Radiotopia,
one of the best independent networks for podcast in the country.
When I was walking across that stage two years ago,
and I didn't have a plan,
I could never have told you that I would be my own boss at age 26 or that ;
(Applause)
or that I would have a show with up to 300,000 listeners a month,
or that I would be standing in front of you
giving this TED talk, and that's because
the job that I have - I didn't learn about in school,
I created it myself.
The funny thing is that I'm still in a box.
(Laughter)
In my closet, right here in Portland Maine,
making Millennial.
But this box doesn't have a ceiling.
It's a place where the growth for me and the show is limitless.
Thank you.
(Applause)