Lily Wiggle

BFA in New Media Production

Expected graduation May 2022

New Media Production has always been my passion, but I didn’t know that until my freshman year of college. 

My first camera was a Flip Video camcorder I stole from my mom when I was seven years old. I used it to record everything. I spent the next few years learning how to edit videos in iMovie and audio in Garageband and shared it all on my YouTube channel for my friends and family to see. I lived in a very small farming community in Western New York and everyone thought I was crazy.

I moved to Florida when I was ten. That year, Instagram was invented and my love for graphic design was born. I created some of the worst graphic designs you’ve ever seen on 99 cent iPhone apps and posted them for my 70 followers. I received my first DSLR at the beginning of high school and ran it into the ground for five years, as I learned about photography in my free time. I took a digital music class during my senior year of high school and fell in love with production as I learned the ins and outs of Logic Pro X.

Ten years of my life were spent exploring the world of media production and yet, I arrived at the University of Tampa with absolutely no idea what to major in. I heard about New Media Production, the culmination of everything I had been passionate about for my entire life, and totally dismissed it. I look back and want to shake 17-year-old me. Luckily, one random day in October, everything clicked, and I walked straight into my advisor’s office and signed a form to declare New Media Production as my major. 

I’ve spent the last three years exploring and refining my passions. Being interested in so many aspects of media production has led me to skip steps and only partially learn subjects in the past. Working towards my BFA has taught me how to take my time and master important skills and software. I may not be the master of all trades when it comes to this field but I’m quite proficient in most.

College has stretched me to my limits. Learning how to manage my time while studying so many subjects at once has not been easy. Having to switch between focusing on coding, filmmaking, audio production, and digital art all within a day has prepared me for the career in media production I hope to have.

Life is so incredibly beautiful, and I’ve spent the past ten years just trying to capture a tiny fraction of that beauty in everything that I do. I’m excited to spend the rest of my time at college until I graduate in the spring of 2022 and my future career learning how best to do that.