I almost didn’t come to UCLA.
Though I had sent in my Statement of Intent in June, whenever people asked whether I was going to transfer to UCLA or return to UC Davis in the fall, I told them I still hadn’t decided. My friends staged an intervention at a Thai restaurant. My parents asked me every single day.
No one understood why someone who wanted to be in the entertainment industry wasn’t jumping at the chance to live in the heart of it. And yet the idea of leaving the comfortable life I had created in the previous two years straight terrified me. So I hopped on a plane for my study abroad program in Cambridge, England and figured I would find the answer there.
And I did. I couldn’t tell you exactly where I discovered it: at that karaoke bar in Edinburgh, Scotland where I sang “Bootylicious,” underneath the Eiffel Tower’s midnight light show with a bottle of champagne or dancing under confetti in a club in Ibiza, Spain. But somewhere along the way in that summer of new adventures I realized I needed to make the jump.
That was the second most important aha moment in my life. The first was when I realized I wanted to be a writer.
That’s the beauty of the aha moment: When the metaphorical light bulb goes off in your head and you realize you’ve found something you didn’t even know you were really searching for. For me, it was at the age of 16, finishing the last few pages of “The Great Gatsby,” that I realized what I was looking for – a voice to tell stories.
One of the main reasons I’ve always focused on arts and entertainment journalism is because I love telling those stories. The dancers, directors, musicians and artists who wake up every day and live their aha moments, no matter how brutal rehearsal, a shoot or the bills were the day before.
A part of me was scared to leave Davis not only because of the life I would leave behind, but because of the life I knew I would be pursuing in the future. To commit to L.A. was to commit to the fact that I was going to be a writer – a journalist, a screenwriter, an author. I would ditch my half-hearted attempt at being an international relations student to live the dream I first had when I was 16.
Fast-forward two years from deciding to move to L.A. and I’m about to make an even bigger jump, off the cliff and into the dark twisted sea that is postgrad. I have no idea if six months from now I’ll be working at a magazine or a movie studio, living in New York or on a boat in Portugal, telling other people’s stories or my own.
But no matter what, I’ll be writing.
Konstantinides was an assistant A&E editor from 2012-2013 and an A&E contributor from 2011-2012.