A Little About Me

          Hello everyone, my name is Alex Avila. I was born in Hollister, CA. I have a little brother named Alan (only about two years younger), who will hopefully join me at UCSB when he graduates from high school. When I was about two or three years old, my family decided to move to Merced, CA. Right after finishing fifth grade, my family then decided to move out of state to Denver, Colorado. I went through middle school there. I loved the house we lived in, and I still miss it today. We had a completed basement (with carpet and bathroom and everything), and we had a pool table, as well as a Foosball table down there. We would also have family movie nights down there. Being in Colorado, we experienced our first white Christmas there. It was really cool; at first. Family back in California would say they love the snow, and we would always try to go up to Sonora in the winter. Well, I always tell them, the snow isn’t all that fun when you have to shovel the driveway daily, and you have to walk to and from school with the bitter chill of the wind rushing past you. After middle school, we were all homesick, so we decided it was time to move back to California. We moved to Atwater (five minutes from Merced), and I graduated from Buhach Colony High School.

          I was never interested in Shakespeare, or any of the other material that they covered in a regular Senior English class, so instead, I took a new English class that was available at our school. It was called Film Composition. We would basically examine the process in which novels would be converted into screenplays, and then how they were made into films. I loved this class, not only because we got to watch movies often, but because this sort of thing really interested me. Throughout the year we did projects in which we would develop screenplays, either based on a book or from our own imagination, and even filmed some of our screenplays. It was the most fun I had ever had on a project. It was then that I decided that this was something I would love to do for a living; something I would want to wake up in the morning to do. 

          Thanks to that class, I am now at UCSB, looking to major in Film and Media Studies. I am really looking forward to learning everything there is to know about my subject, as well as exploring other subjects offered here at UCSB. I also definitely want study abroad somewhere in Europe within the next few years. I’m really looking forward to the next four years.

"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge, but imagination."

          - Albert Einstein