3b. BJ Levin (10/20)

What We Did: After one of our lectures we had the privilege of getting a visit from BJ Levin, a UMD alum who is now an executive producer at VICE media. He told us how he worked in investment banking on Wall Street right out of college – something hundreds of thousands of college students dream of everyday. However, once he got there he realized he hated it. Instead of staying there and being miserable, he decided to leave and pursue another dream of his to get into producing. According to him, passion is everything. If you don’t have extreme passion for what you’re doing, Levin argues that there’s no point in doing it at all.

He didn’t know the first thing about producing or how he could get a job doing it, so he started by talking to people in this field. BJ explained how important it is to network with people because you might need their help somewhere down the line. Eventually he produced his own film and sent it to companies all over the country. He told us that companies rejected him over and over and over again – now he’s an Emmy winner. He explained that just because you fail, it doesn’t mean that you’re a failure. It just means you are that much closer to something awesome.

Key Takeaways and Future Applications: A major insight that I gained from this guest speaker is that it’s never too early to put myself out there. Nobody is just going to hand out internships; we must relentlessly chase these opportunities ourselves. Getting job experience is one of the most important things we can do because it will show us what we do and do not like doing. BJ told us that the best way to find out if we want to do something in the future is to sit down and talk with them. This is an idea that many people don’ t even consider, but speaking with people who knows firsthand what a job is like will tell you so much more than you could find out any other way. It could also potentially save you a lot of time if you decide that what they’re describing isn’t for you.

If I had to describe BJ Levin’s speech in one word, it would be vicious. The point he wanted to make was that nothing is going to be handed to us, and he did this in a very harsh but realistic way. He told us that since we go to a big state school we’re already at a disadvantage. That’s not something you want to hear your first few weeks of freshman year, so I was a little taken aback. His diction was full of curse words and critical observations. I don’t think he was trying to come off as rude; he was just trying to motivate us to work harder than we ever thought we had to.