Project Kennedy Fighting Cancers of All Colors Scholarship

Before my dad had cancer, I always viewed it as something horrible. Something that took parent and kids away from each other, that put strain on family finances and decimated once healthy bodies. And most unfortunately, I viewed it as something that happened to other people. So when my parents came into my room in 2020 to tell me that my dad had cancer, I just told them that that wasn’t a funny joke and went back to my asynchronous schoolwork. But it wasn’t a joke. My dad had colon cancer, and the next few years would be spent dealing with the way the sickness revealed and obscured so many things about my family. Most people see stories on the news of people diagnosed with cancer that keep a happy disposition, or gain a new spiritual outlook on life. That was not my father. He’d never been the most optimistic person, and I’d even go as far as to say he’s pretty difficult. But the sickness amplified that by a thousand. The tension that had been lying beneath our family for years bubbled to the surface, and my while my father made promises to change his behavior, I knew that they were promises made in the haze of fear that surrounded his diagnoses. I was so, so angry all the time. My mom walked around with a look of perpetual fear on her face, her shoulders always tense. And we were all so, very tired. To relieve the mess of emotions within me, I spent time in my room with my dads projector. I spent my free hours the way many people did during that time; binging movies and TV shows on streaming. And as I payed more attention to each new show or film, I realized how complex the creation of the media we watched really was. I began to pay more attention to the behind the scenes work of each production, and earned a new appreciation for the medium. And as the months went on I realized something else; one thing my family could always depend on to bring us together, no matter what tensions arose, was settling in the living room to watch a new movie. Watching something with my family as an escape from the pressures of school, the sickness, and what was going on in the world became my escape. I didn’t feel a mess of emotions and anger when I sat down next to my dad and we watched a new science fiction movie together. I felt peaceful next to him for that time. And as my passion for the field grew, I realized that I could apply my long time love of reading and writing to the field as a director and screenwriter. Movies and TV got my entire family through what was a rough time. And as I entered college, I knew that choosing Film as my major was the right path. The cancer was terrible, it revealed an ugliness within my family that, for as painful as it was, needed to be revealed. And sitting together in front of a new show or movie was the bandage for that wound. It forced us together at a time where we felt so far apart from each other. And for that I’ll be forever grateful.