Follow my dream? (Ruth Zapico)

Should I follow my dream? Should I think about being stable? Is my major going to make me succeed somehow? But wait, is there many job opportunities in this field? What would I end up becoming? How much is my profit going to be?

Hello Readers! My name is Ruth Zapico Mancebo, I am an international student from Spain studying at Santa Barbara City College. I am sure that many of you have all this questions running around your head, going also back and forth, doing couple sprints until you get headaches. I would like to talk to you about my dream job and I would like to share the advice I got from my dad which is what keeps me strong and motivated to fight to achieve my dreams. Since we are young we dream about being a productive individual and doing something valuable with our lives. Many kids dream about being police officers, singers, pilots or some kind of professional athlete. However my dream was to be an actress.

While I considered my choices, I saw a lot of advantages in acting. It is a very dynamic and social job, and it is also a job with a good salary. I believe acting is a kind of “art” because not everyone can convincingly create a fictional character by layering emotions, on top of attitude, on top of actions. I believe acting can teach us to know and control ourselves in a deeper way, and it can gives us a higher self esteem. On the other hand, acting is a really competitive profession and is a hard field to get into. In the acting world, your level of experience or education may not earn you the job you are looking for.  No matter how hard you work, if you are not liked by your viewer you will not get the job. Another downside to acting, is that it is not the usual 9 to 5 job. You may be employed one day and then looking for work opportunity the next. In my opinion acting is a talent which can not always be learned, but can be improved upon. Acting does not depend on the effort, the hours or the work you put into it, but in fact, acting is a job that has a very subjective way of being judged. Not everyone has the same kind of humor, fears or feelings and all acting is open to interpretation.  

Therefore, I decided to avoid acting as a major and just take couple classes at Santa Barbara City College. (Which was a wrong decision. I should have made acting my major because I spend all day waiting desperately for those acting classes to start. A passion, is a passion). I decided to have business as my major. My plan is to graduate with a degree in business entertainment, media and technology. This degree hopefully takes me somewhere related with acting and film. After graduating I would like to receive my master’s degree either in advertising or marketing. I imagine myself working for a big multinational company in their marketing and advertising departments. I picture myself working for brands such as Nike or Adidas but my dream would be working with either Versace or Gucci. I would love to work for either of these brands because they are big, high end, and exclusive brands that need a really powerful marketing to keep their high status.

In the end, I have no idea where I am going to end up or what I am going to end up doing. All I know is that the harder I work and prepare myself for the future the better my resume is going to be and the easiest and faster I will find the job that makes me happy. My dad always told me that we have to do what makes us happy. If it makes us happy, we are not going to care about the amount of effort we put in or the hours we spend doing it. For this reason it will make us succeed easily. The money will come with that success; in fact we will have a personal success too. It looks like everything is a proportional and related logic. With happiness we will succeed and with the success will come the money.


Thank you Reader for getting all the way here. I hope you find whatever makes you happy!!

See you soon!

Ruth.

California (Ruth Zapico)

The first President of the United States, George Washington was born on the 18th of February. Which means that we do not have school on the 18th. The perfect reason to make a trip to Los Angeles and to always keep exploring.

Hello Readers! My name is Ruth Zapico Mancebo, I am an international student from Spain studying at Santa Barbara City College. I just wanted to tell you how my experience is going so far as well as my personal opinion about California and what I have learned about myself.

First of all, in Spain, when you mention that you are going to the United States, without a doubt the next thing to be asked is: are you going to California or New York? California is well known for its good wealth, weather, health, freedom and for being a romantic place. In fact, if we think about it, how has California become such a well-known place? California has earned itself all these titles due in part to its socially accepting sanctuary for the diverse and unique number of people living there and for the initiation of companies like Apple, Disney or Netflix as well as millions of other clothing brands known all over the world such as Patagonia, The North Face or O’Neill. To explain the titles that define California, we could put more emphasis on the multiculturalism that takes place in California, which allows the exchange of knowledge between people with different mindsets, cultures, and desires. Having a larger amount and more diverse array of knowledge only encourages the production of trends, creativity and marks the difference between California and other states in the United States.

California became a dream to many because of the high expectations and speculations. Thanks to the entertainment California acquired a great image. I am sure many of you have heard “Malibu,” a song from Miley Cyrus which has an awesome video clip with images from the California beaches. The band Sweet California already has the message on their group name and songs like “Hotel California,” “California Gurls,” “Californication,” or the classic “California Dreaming” are many pretty letters dedicated to California that make you imagine something that does not always match the reality. As far as my experience has gone, I came to California with the high expectations that media, including movies, social media, marketing, and society put on me thanks to the globalization. I was looking for a good life or for the “summer” life that movies have shown over time. However, this weekend I visited Los Angeles and nothing was as I imagined it. Or maybe it was but the expectations were so high that it felt like it did not matter. Nothing surprised me, neither the restaurants, the streets, the buildings, the beaches, or the lifestyle. Nevertheless, this did not bother me and I decided to see the good side of everything because every place, and every moment has always a good side. The good side and the reasons why California keeps me here is because of Santa Barbara City College. The resources here are incredible but even better are the professors. They make learning to be fun, motivating, based on understanding and in a way that it hooks you and makes you want to learn more and more. In my English 110 class, we are learning about California and Professor Jason File makes us think and be creative which is something I love because he is giving me the opportunity to express myself and have a voice. Professor Cindy Benelli teaches me ECON 101, and her class is amazing because she explains everything with real-life examples and situations to which most of us can relate. Professor Caren Adorni teaches Acting for the Camera and it is the class I live for since acting is my passion. Last but not least, my BUS 101 class is taught by Professor Dorthe Walker who is really interesting listening to because of all the knowledge and experience she has.

To sum up, if you are one of the Readers that is feeling like for some reason you have not connected with California, try to relate by looking at the good facts or the positive points it has. Be open-minded to situations, and travel to grow personally and discover new places. You never know where and when the biggest opportunity is going to call your name, so keep the positive side of every place you go to.

Reader, thank you for getting all the way here! Remember always to be critical with your opinions and to have a comprehensive, optimistic and open-minded view of life, it helps to live your every day in a happier mood.

See you soon! Ruth.

Explore, enterprise, and culture (Ruth Zapico)

Hello readers! My name is Ruth Zapico and I am an international student from Spain at Santa Barbara City College. Please, grab a cup of coffee, tea, or whatever drink that you enjoy. Then, sit down and keep reading. Hopefully you learn something from my experience being an international student, and maybe you will consider becoming one too.

From the beginning I knew I wanted to come to California, one of the most prestigious states. I think that studying in the USA is a really serious and important opportunity for your future. Especially for job opportunities, because of that prestige that I mentioned before.

I would like you to keep in mind three words that we will be talking about throughout the rest of this blog post. These words are: explore, enterprise, and culture. Later on I will tell you how these three words can apply to you.

As humans, we all have different personalities, ways of thinking and interpreting. These, among many others, are what makes every single of us unique. I came to California to study film and tv production because California is the birthplace of the cinema. However, if you are interested in biology or engineering, that is perfect too, you are just another human being with different interests than me. Maybe your reason to come to California is the nice weather, the surfing or the beautiful beaches. Once I knew I wanted to come, I started looking up universities, and I read about every single one of them. It was a really long process, I am not going to lie. Many of those universities were not for me. Either because of the cost, the location or the majors it offered. Then I found Santa Barbara City College. It was a perfect match, so I applied, and a couple of months later I was in California putting together my new IKEA furniture.

Do you still have in your mind those words that I told you earlier? When I came to SBCC, I was looking forward to become more independent, to have more freedom, to explore things and getting out of my comfort zone, and probably following the dreams I have.

Becoming a Santa Barbara City College student brought me so many opportunities. SBCC brought me the opportunity to explore, because it lets you try out different things, to see what you like the best. It brings you the opportunity to do internships as well as working on campus after the 1st semester. SBCC also gave me the opportunity to be an enterprising and creative person because the classes are really practical instead of having to memorize many formulas and letters. And last but not least, in SBCC there is a concentration of people from so many countries from the world. This is beautiful because a lot of out new knowledge comes from talking and living with people from different cultures.

I have learned that in order to succeed you have to work hard to reach your dream. No one is going to do the work for you, and success is something you need to work for. I have also learned what it’s like to live with people with different cultures. It can be challenging sometimes, but most of the time it’s amazing. It is crazy how much knowledge you gain from this experience. For this reason, I welcome future students to enjoy this great opportunity that Santa Barbara City College offers you to explore, create and enterprise among the exchange of knowledge.

Talk soon,

Ruth