He pulls out the picture of a man playing chess with his son. I saw them in the library that day with Grant, and took their picture because I liked how content they both looked. Professor Lutkiss studies the picture carefully, and I grip the edge of the table until my knuckles turn white. He flips through the rest of my folder. In addition to the picture of the man and his son playing chess, I’ve taken a picture of Simone on the phone with her mom, the look on her face betraying just how much she misses her, a picture of a toddler on a slide with a look of glee on his face, two dogs playing in the quad, and a picture of a mom crying as she watches her son head back to the dorms after dropping him off from a weekend at home.

I had several shots of each, but Drew helped me pick out the final prints.

“Would the person who took this picture,” Professor Lutkiss announces, holding up the print, “please see me after class?”

I’m so fucked.

NOW

He loved them. He told me I had a knack for seeing outside the obvious and he thought I had potential. I told him I was thinking about making photography my major. He told me that once you came in undeclared, you had to be invited to apply for the photography program, but that if this was any indication of the work to come, he would be more than happy to extend the invitation. He told me I had some technical things to work on, and that some of the explanations in my writeup about the techniques I used were off, but he could see the raw talent that was there. I left class feeling better about myself than I had in a long time. Maybe ever.

Something was happening. It wasn’t just the photography thing or the Corey thing, although those were major aspects of it. Looking back, it’s so easy to see. Watching tapes of the show, it’s even more apparent, since the production staff did an excellent job of editing out all the boring, insignificant parts of my life. At the time, though, I had no idea.

Now it seems almost insane that I couldn’t see the changes that were taking place. But maybe that’s the problem with changes—you never notice the signs until it’s too late, until all these little things add up to become one extreme event, one that changes your life and makes you take notice.

THEN

REACTION TO THE ANNOUNCEMENT THAT I WANT TO MAJOR IN PHOTOGRAPHY (A SUMMARY):

MY MOM: Oh, sweetie, photography? That sounds like it could be . . . fun. Do they allow any kind of dual major? You could major in photography and something else. That way, you’d have a fallback plan.