Experience Summary
In one form or another, I have been in a university setting for 18 years and for the last five years, I have been a columnist, writer and teacher in several capacities as a university reading and writing consultant, a public school substitute, an introduction to literature professor, a reporter and columnist, a film/music editor, a writing strategies professor, and a composition and rhetoric instructor.
Currently, I am pursuing a MFA in Documentary Filmmaking and Media studies at the University of North Texas where I also teach introduction to Radio, Television, and Film writing as well as assistant teach for a class entitled Theory and Critical Studies. My first documentary, Funeral School, seeks to understand why late teens and early twentysomethings have chosen to pursue careers in the funeral profession. So far, Funeral School has been accepted into three film festivals, deadCenter, Festival South Film Festival, and Red Dirt Film Festival. My second documentary, The Snakes of Sweetwater, covers the experiences and controversy surrounding rattlesnake round-up events. And I have just begun preproduction for my next film, Circus City, USA, that shows what life is like in Hugo, Oklahoma where a tiny town of 5000 has had more than 20 different circus companies call Hugo home during the winter months.
My Master of Fine Arts degree comes from the University of Central Oklahoma where I studied writing disciplines in poetry, novel, creative non-fiction, and screenwriting. At the graduate level, beyond these creative writing workshops, I have taken courses in International Cinema, Shakespeare’s Major Plays, Shakespeare’s Comedies, 20th Century British Novel, 20th and 21 Century Fiction, Literary Criticism, Methods and Pedagogy, British Cinema, Editing and Marketing, History of the Documentary, Contemporary Documentary, Cinematography, Film Production, Film Pre-Production, and Classical Hollywood Cinema (classical narration theory). I also have two minors--religion and philosophy--and, ideally, a diverse humanities/liberal studies background, along with my graduate education in literature and creative studies, have helped me express myself with critical and rational faculties and, hopefully, a flare of originality. I have always delighted in teaching, as well as writing, because both provide me with a unique opportunity: to revel at the moment when a student or reader comprehends a concept and makes a revelation for themselves. I look forward to these occasions because I also welcome those moments when others open me up to new or different ways of thinking.
Long ago, for over five years, I once worked as a cashier and floor manager at a locally owned restaurant in Stillwater, Oklahoma, called The Hideaway. The store grossed well over two million dollars and year, but, had the business been more efficient with its funds, the restaurant could have earned an even bigger profit. I am rather exceptional at seeing the big picture--at assessing problem solving on the macro level--and, having seen many nightly receipts and monthly bottom lines, I made five suggestions to the restaurant's owner, Dave, that would save the restaurant $1500-2000 a month. For example, making one less batch of dough per day would have saved the restaurant $50-$60 dollars, depending on the cost of flour, and the restaurant was tossing two to three dough barrels in the trash each night. Another example would be that, when the restaurant was purchasing new drinking glasses, I suggested we move up from 16 ounce glasses to 32 ounces glasses because this measure alone would allow the restaurant to clock-on one or two fewer "helper" or “swing” wait-staff whose primary task was to refill drinks and clear-off tables. The main reason why we used “swing” waiters was because our glasses were far too small, which forced the restaurant to pay anywhere from one to four people a shift to primarily get refills. Moreover, the restaurant's starting pay was $7.50 an hour, so, by merely utilizing larger drinking glasses, our restaurant would have saved anywhere from $40-$160 dollars per shift.
I could go on but my point is that while triple majoring in journalism, history, and English in my undergraduate work, I learned the importance of, and how to, not only communicate verbally and through writing but I also learned to analyze, adapt, troubleshoot, and--in a word--to think. Each discipline poses its own challenges. And, between them, I discovered how to better organize ideas, designate fact and opinion to their proper places, and to demonstrate clarity. Or, stated another way, I really do not believe a business degree would have helped me see how the company was hemorrhaging money. That ability came elsewhere, from a place of observation and recognition.
I am amicable, laid back, reassuring, conscientious, supportive, well adjusted, analytical, and fun to have around. In terms of media experience, I have worked at four radio stations (KAYE, KSPY, KWBY, and KGFY), a small TV station (KWEM), a campus newspaper (Daily O’Collegian) with a circulation of 10,000 copies, and the state office of Oklahoma Film and Music within the Oklahoma Department of Tourism. Between these positions, I have written news stories, editorials, press releases, and features; not to mention band bios and movie summaries. I have also done freelance writing for Oklahoma publications, namely the Oklahoma Gazette, Red Dirt Report and OKC.Net.
Furthermore, I am the former film and music editor of Arcadia, a literary journal started by myself and several other graduate students at the University of Central Oklahoma. I have also worked as a stage and tour manager for the indie band Other Lives, and I have an upcoming poem in the Nov/Dec issue of Art Focus and I have published a poem in Rattle, the tenth largest literary magazine in the country (http://www.rattle.com/poetry/make-a-wish-foundation-by-adam-michael-wright/). When I toured with Other Lives, my responsibilities included coordinating with record labels, music management, business management, music venues, promoters, booking agents, book hotels, and I had to organize the band’s daily itinerary, band appearances/interviews, and meetings. In fact, the band named their critically acclaimed album and title track, Tamer Animals, after my unpublished poetry chapbook:
http://www.antimusic.com/news/11/may/10Singled_Out-_Other_Lives_Tamer_Animals.shtml.