I don’t know with you but I graduated last fall from USC Film and Television Department with a degree in acting. I hired a very competitive but low-priced talent agent and two days from now, I’ll be starting shooting as a guest in one episode of Grey’s Anatomy. I can now chat with my idol Katherine Heigl. Isn’t that great? So there you have it, that’s one career advice I can dispense with you. Be good in your passion. Acting is my passion and so is Katherine Heigl. That’s why I idolize her and she has been my inspiration all throughout the four years I’ve been in USC Film and Television even though she really had no formal college education. But she’s been great as an actress.

Her very first movie was way back in 1992 and filming wrapped up earlier when she was barely 12 years old. The movie was called That Night, it was a B-movie but not that unpopular since it starred Juliette Lewis, that child wonder who is Robert de Niro’s nemesis in Cape Fear. In That Night, Juliette Lewis starred as a very sexy teenage girl who was the subject of Katherine Heigl’s voyeuristic tendencies while Juliette Lewis was making love with her boyfriend. That role alone was very challenging. Of course, Katherine had to undergo pubescence and all those goodie-goodie movie roles that came along with it. Thus, she starred in nonsense roles but were equally important since they served as training grounds for her as a better actress.

Her next movie after That Night though was Steven Soderbergh’s follow-up of sex, lies and videotape which was King of the Hill, a tale set during the Depression. Unfortunately, Katherine’s role here was relegated to a mere goodie-goodie 13-year-old kid but considering that director Soderbergh himself set his eyes on the kid, that’s really something. Of course, other worthless roles followed such as the remake of the French comedy classic My Father the Hero. In here, Katherine was fortunate enough to be paired with the greatest French actor at the time, Gerard Depardieu. Then in Under Siege 2, Katherine played Casey Ryback’s niece. Luck was really with this girl because she was paired with the great aikido artist Steven Seagal. Then came more goodie-goodie roles such as Wish Upon A Star and 100 Girls.

I have constantly been a diligent student even during my freshman year in high school. I have always been a fan of movies – just every genre and my parents have even scolded me for sneaking R-rated movies into our DVD player at home which are too violent and which offer sex scenes. But even when I was in puberty then, I was never aroused at any of the sex scenes. When I view a movie, I am forever detached from the story. I always look at all the clinical aspects of the movie. I can still laughingly recall at the time when it was me and my cousin Mike only at our crib. It was one dark evening and the rain was pouring in torrents. I was watching The Hole, a British horror movie which featured the lovely Kiera Knightley and I intentionally switched the lights off in our room so I could watch the movie vividly. Since it was a horror movie, my cousin walked out of the room and left me alone. I just laughed at him and enjoyed at how cinematographer Denis Crossan angled his camera to make the terror in the movie believable to the audience.

And I was mesmerized. The Hole was actually the stepping stone of my goal. I want to be a cinematographer someday. And so I am diligently studying during my high school days. I am always at the top of my class. I really enjoy the literature classes but I make sure that I also excel in physics and trigonometry all for that one goal – to study filmmaking at any of the most prestigious film schools in the United States. In fact, I want to excel in high school so I can grab scholarships. As we all know, not even middle class families can afford to send their children to the best universities in the country. Some of them just land at community colleges. And I don’t belong to that class. I am an African-American and we are just living on mortgage in a middle-class neighborhood here in some rural county in Kentucky.

Then during weekends, I rent movies voraciously. I don’t just watch movies at random and with bias. Even though I’m an African-American, I don’t dig into Denzel Washington, Spike Lee or Antoine Fuqua movies just because they are African-American too. I want to view movies because I simply like the cinematography. I eventually loved the grindhouse and the graphic genre of Frank Miller, Quentin Tarantino, Elmore Leonard, Robert Rodriguez and the Wachowski Brothers. But I also like the styles of the Coen Brothers and Danny Boyle. See, I don’t have any bias when it comes to watching movies. One of the cinematographers who is my idol is Janusz Kaminski. From his vertigo-inducing work in Munich to his heartbreaking camera angles in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Janusz can really communicate the lesson of the movie to the audience.

ACCORDING to the Chinese, this year will be a very prosperous year because most of the numbers in 2008 i.e. 008 are written facing up. Also, 2008 is the Year of the Rat and the rat is the highest animal in Chinese mythology. But coupled with being prosperous are the usual challenges of course. Challenges are of course natural. Ever since January opened, there have been lots of challenges but they can be boiled to two things – first, an Australian futurist has predicted that in 40 years’ time, there will be another Ice Age and all population has to move to northern Europe. But the more alarming challenge is how to save the world economy from recession.

It all started in 2007 when the mortgage sector in the United States crashed. Now in January, ripples are already felt even as far as Asia. That’s why one of the most lucrative and challenging careers of a high school graduate in 2008 is to take up a career in economics. You don’t need to be in a very reputable school to do that because lots of online colleges offer economic programs. But to be in the crème de la crème and to be offered a job in a Fortune 500 company or in a government think tank in the future, one must go to highly reputable educational institutions such as Georgetown.

You don’t need to be rich to afford being in such institutions. All you need is your brain. You take the academic scholarship and if you are really that determined, you can surely whiz through. By the time you have graduated from Georgetown School of Economics, you will have joined the ranks of Philippine President Gloria Arroyo and former United States President Bill Clinton. Then you can be employed at the Federal Reserve. For the next 40 years, your career will surely shine and you may even be appointed as Federal Reserve Board chair.

This post is not about lucid dreaming. It’s all accepting about the realities now. Another challenge that is facing us for example is in the area of infectious diseases. In the 20th century, we have experienced a total of two flu pandemics that has killed millions worldwide – in 1918 and in 1958. With the establishment of the CDC in Atlanta thankfully, potential pandemic carriers such as SARS and bird flu have been contained by the start of the new millennium. But let must not rest our laurels there. We need to be continually vigilant. That’s why a career in infectious diseases can make one a hero.

But in the end, whatever you must do must have passion. Do not force yourself to become an aeronautics engineer or a defense attorney if you are just forced by your parents and if you are not inclined to be one. You will never learn and never concentrate in the end if you do not put your whole passion to it.+