00:00Hey guys, it's Lucy. I've received a ton of questions on Instagram and YouTube and
00:04Twitter about my career path and how I got to do what I'm doing today for
00:08Refinery29, so I'm hoping to answer all of your questions right now. In order to
00:12tell the story of how I got to where I am, I have to go back in time and take
00:16you back to childhood Lucy. I was never shy in front of the camera. I always loved
00:20performing. In high school I did theater, and in college I was in an acapella group,
00:25and performing was always a really big part of who I was. The other side of me
00:29was able to stomach really gory open heart surgery on TV. So for a while as a
00:34young child I thought maybe I meant to be a doctor. But when it came time to go to
00:38college and I ended up getting into Johns Hopkins and deciding to go there, I
00:42figured this must be a sign. If I want to be a doctor, Johns Hopkins University is
00:46one of the best medical institutions in the entire world. I had a couple of
00:49conversations with some friends of mine who were also pre-med, and it just didn't
00:53seem that we had the same reasons for wanting to be a doctor, which made me
00:57think, maybe I made the wrong decision. When I decided to switch my major away
01:01from neuroscience, I needed to figure out what I was gonna actually major in. I've
01:05always loved writing, so when I discovered that the writing seminars
01:08department at Johns Hopkins was one of the strongest writing programs in the
01:12whole country, I knew that that needed to be my new major. A lot of people ask where
01:17I got my production experience and what classes I took to learn these skills. The
01:21truth is, I did not take any classes on video production. I learned every single
01:26thing that I know about production from making videos for YouTube. So as a
01:30freshman at Hopkins, I decided to pitch a YouTube series to the admissions office
01:34that was essentially a travel channel show about the city of Baltimore. Now let me
01:38just say, I had no production experience when I pitched this show. Truly I was
01:42going in blind, but I had an idea and I thought I could do it and I pitched it, and
01:47the admissions office loved it. Once I had been in college for a couple of years and I
01:50had been producing all this video content, I kept sending it over to the Today Show
01:55because I wanted to show them that if they ever needed a teen to come onto the
01:59show, I was a comfortable teen on camera. Then one day, my junior year, I guess I
02:03sent enough videos over that a producer from the Today Show reached out and
02:07invited me to come on the show. They were doing a segment about parents and teens
02:11and they wanted to talk to teens directly. Over the course of a year, I was on the
02:15Today Show six or seven times. Then it came time to graduate from college and I
02:18remember really thinking that I was headed towards a career of being on camera in a
02:23TV environment. But unfortunately, the only on-camera opportunity that I got was a
02:27boot camp program to be a news reporter, and that really didn't seem to align with
02:32the exact type of on-camera work that I wanted to do. So instead of taking that, I
02:36wound up going the complete opposite route and going into the production side. I
02:40started at a giant ad agency as a PA, a production assistant, and I worked my way
02:45up over the course of a year to being an AP, an associate producer. The environment at
02:49this ad agency really fostered creativity and being a maker, and I remember them
02:54telling us to just pick up a camera and do something. And so I really have this ad
02:58agency to thank for my current stop-motion love. I didn't know anyone else
03:02that made stop-motions. I didn't ever take a class on it. I didn't use any apps to
03:06make stop-motions. I learned it just through doing it and through practicing it,
03:10and over time I was able to really perfect the art of the craft. My love for stop-motion
03:15ended up turning into a side hustle, and I had brands coming to me asking me to
03:19create stop-motions for their social media channels, for their websites, and at
03:23the time when I was working at that ad agency, the stop-motion videos on my
03:26Instagram were paying for my rent in New York City. So how did I get to Refinery29?
03:31I was at this ad agency and I really still had my on-camera dream. Somebody who I
03:36met at my ad agency actually gave me a connection to the video team at Refinery29.
03:41Now this was in 2015 when the video team at Refinery was tiny and was just
03:45getting started. And I remember showing them all of my video reels, everything I
03:49did at school, on the Today Show, all of my stop-motion videos, and it was
03:53absolutely right place, right time. So I whipped out my notebook which had a whole
03:58bunch of shows that I had wanted to produce since high school. One of them
04:01being the five-day challenge format, Try Living with Lucy. And thankfully Refinery was
04:05looking for just that. They needed content, they needed producers, they needed editors, and we
04:11were a match made in heaven. And now I'm still here today! So if you're looking for
04:15a career in media or something creative and you want a similar career path to me,
04:20here are my three main takeaways. Number one, constantly create. You don't need a
04:25fancy website. If you want to put your work out into the world, just put it on
04:28social media. And you don't need a lot of money. Number two, do not be afraid to take
04:34internships or low entry-level positions when you're starting in this field. This
04:37field is totally DIY. You just got to go in, start at the bottom, work your way up,
04:42and really, really bust your ass. And number three, never ever stop learning and
04:47growing. Even when you think that you've learned all there is to know, there is so
04:51much more knowledge and so many people all around you at all times that can teach
04:56you something new, that can just advance your career to the next level. So never
05:00think that you've hit the top. The most important thing to keep in mind is that
05:03everyone's career path is different and the timing is different for everyone, so
05:07you cannot compare yourself to people around you. I hope that was helpful and I
05:10hope you learned a lot about my career path. See you next time!
