I swallowed. “Um, the culture journalist who just became the youngest person to win a Pulitzer for feature writing?”
Dr. Miller smiled. “She went on the program. I think you’d be a great candidate.”
“Wait, Dr. Miller, are you serious?”
It was too much—of what I wanted to do, exactly what I had been waiting for—and it filled my chest till my giddiness spilled out of my mouth. The summer before university I missed out on a competitive media internship in London due to reasons I liked to file under personal. Too many feelings had hampered my ability think straight last time, my mind was too messy, and my heart was too unharnessed. I had myself together this time. I was collected, controlled. In other words, I wasn’t about to fuck this up.
Dr. Miller’s eyes glinted. “I’m not joking. Jokes are rather tedious, don’t you think? I’ll email you the forms. Deadline is January. Now, I know you’ll do fine with the essay part of the application. It’s about the power of media and your personal connection to it, but you will also need an exceptional media-related, extra-curricular project—”
“Oh, easy—”
“And I know you already have that with Brown Sugar,” Dr. Miller continued with a pointedly quirked brow, “which is wonderful, but your task concerns”—she clicked on her laptop with a red polished nail and pushed her glasses up—“‘Building, creating, or growing. The candidate will need to pursue and achieve tangible growth of a media project or platform, by diversifying the format or by building from scratch.’ It’s about evolving what you already have and recording how you did it. A project plan—”
“Brown Sugar is already one of the most popular media platforms on campus—”
“Your base is commendable. Decent. Loyal. I’ve seen the numbers. But there is still room to grow. It’s a great show but there’s plenty of ways to improve it, if you want to. It might be worth doing some sort of survey to find out why the people who don’t listen, don’t listen.”
I nodded and sat up. “Okay. I mean, of course, I’ll do what I can to lift up the ratings, but surely, it’s not my job to chase listeners, right? They’re either with me or they’re not. I can’t contort myself into something I’m not—”
Dr. Miller smiled, a genteel glimmer of a sword. It told me she was about to sweetly read me, drag me, or both. “Kikiola.” The force of my full name informed me that I was right. “Media is about staying true to your voice, of course, but it’s also about interacting with the people you’re communicating with. It’s not about talking at, it’s talking to, with.
“What do people want? How can it align with what you’re trying to achieve? Are you generating conversation or just providing didactic answers? You may have blind spots—in fact, I know that you do—especially when it comes to opening up to other people.”
I usually didn’t mind Dr. Miller exercising the operative word in “personal tutor,” but for some reason, in this instance, it jarred. Couldn’t she just awkwardly ask me how I’m coping with university and shove some pamphlets about student alcoholism my way, like a regular one?
“Dr. Miller, I work in groups all the time in seminars!”
Dr. Miller raised a brow. “Kiki, when you’re put in a group, you don’t give space for other people’s ideas.”
“But in our mass media presentation Harry suggested that books should have the ability to be ingested through a serum we inject. It was worrying. Also we need to talk about the counselling system in this school—”
“It was out-of-the-box thinking. Why don’t we question traditional modes of information? It was worth discussing, even if you did conclude that it lent itself too easily to eugenics and indoctrination.” Her lips were a wry slant. “Another issue is that you do all the work and divide it among the group.”
“I do n—”
“I know your voice, and I hardly think a Patricia Hill Collins quote is coming from Percy. Kiki, I really want to be able to put you forward for this program. You’re the perfect candidate. But I also want to see all you can be for it, and that means challenging yourself. Brown Sugar can be bigger, and I think that may include figuring out how you can work with the needs of your community.”
My shoulders slumped and I sat back in my chair. This wasn’t a stipulation, this was a glitch, a catch, like, yes you have free tickets to a Drake concert but you have to listen to white dudebros rapping in your ear at a party for three hours straight beforehand. The formula worked. People wrote in and I responded—how else could I work with my community?