Karina Schechter ’20: Finding a Multitude of Benefits in CMA
One of the biggest highlights of my college experience was Vanderbilt’s Cinema & Media Arts department. I can look back on every single class, project, and screening, and find a hundred things to smile about. CMA’s tight-knit community of eclectic creatives, budding theorists, and personable professors nurtured the development of productive classroom environments and, even more impactfully, personal and professional support systems. In production classes especially, your classmates become your crewmates and some of the people you spend the most time with. This forges close friendships that extend well beyond the Vandy campus—in fact, the CMA alumni working in entertainment are incredibly helpful to their successors. Beyond the relationships formed with students, alumni, and professors in the program, I am proud to be coming out of college with a diverse reel that showcases the skills I’ve developed in animation, documentary, narrative, and 16mm filmmaking. I’m thankful for this archive of work that serves as a testament to both my creativity and the truly wonderful Vanderbilt film courses.