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Jude Teleau |
You wouldn't know it from looking at me, but I'm an aspiring screenwriter with a serious passion for cinema. As I go about my day as a medical assistant at Martha Eliot Health Center, interacting with people of all backgrounds, ages and races, I'm reminded how unique each individual is.
Behind every employee, behind every patient, there is a personal story—an unseen skill or passion that guides that person and pushes them to achieve great things. For me, it's creative writing.
I grew up in Port au Prince, Haiti, and I loved movies and television from a young age. I remember watching the TV series Little House on the Prairie as a child, and I watched dozens of American, Haitian and Latin American movies, all dubbed in French. The act of storytelling and creating an alternate reality from scratch impressed and inspired me. Schindler's List was one of the first movies that opened my eyes to the power of cinema. It was so raw and real, and I was struck by how much the craft in the movie—the use of color, images and sound—affected me.
But I didn't try my own hand at writing a screenplay until three years ago, when I found myself in America—the home of Hollywood—and decided, 'Why not give it a shot?' I was 24 when I moved here to be with my father, who has lived in Boston all my life. While I was searching for a job, I began a screenplay to engage my imagination and keep myself focused.
The movie, called Red Mob Feud, is about a Russian mob family who has relocated to New York. On a larger scale, the movie attempts to tackle the dangers of nuclear proliferation and the global threat that collaboration between organized criminals and terrorists might represent.
The elements of the screenplay are totally outside of my own experience, but the broad theme of nuclear weapons ending up in the wrong hands has always interested me. In Haiti, I studied public administration in college and became fascinated with the issue of nuclear proliferation.
I began writing every day, plotting out the story longhand in my notebooks and reading up on the relevant subjects. I poured over screenwriting books. Shortly after I began, I was given the opportunity to work at Children's Hospital Boston as an environmental services assistant and had to learn to balance my work at Children's with my work at home. When I started, I was writing prolifically. I would get off work, take a shower, eat something and start to write at 7 p.m. On the weekend, I would dedicate eight to 10 hours a day to painstakingly creating scenes, dialogue and action. This kind of time commitment ended when I began classes at a technical school in Charlestown to become a medical assistant. While in school, my writing became a weekend activity.
Screenwriting is an activity with which I have a love-hate relationship. I hate it when I bump into writer's block and I love it when I can overcome these blocks. The most rewarding feeling is when you witness the story's characters coming alive and begin to take over the story, creating their own narrative. It's an amazing sensation. There's always rewriting to be done; for the story to be right, sometimes I find that I might have to rewrite every single word.
After two years of working in Environmental Services on the Longwood campus, I transferred to Martha Eliot Health Center to be a medical assistant. I am now getting my associate's degree in Medical Imaging at Bunker Hill Community College, and plan on working in cardiac sonography. Writing is still what I do in my spare time, when I'm not studying for an anatomy and physiology chapter or performing an EKG on a patient.
Completing the screenplay is a daunting goal, but I take it as a challenge. Focusing so much energy on a creative pursuit myself reminds me that all of us, at Children's and in the world, possess many other skills than what we may see when we pass each other in the halls. Working at Children's has not only given me a dynamic sense of service, but has also allowed me a glimpse into the diversity of talent that we are lucky to have here. I especially appreciate the great job Children's does in encouraging and supporting its employees' personal development, which makes us stronger and ultimately makes the organization stronger.
The everyday interactions I have while doing my professional duties could be the object of a thousand other movies. Every day is full of little dramas and funny situations, and I'm storing many anecdotes in my head that I'd like to write about. But currently, I'm satisfied to just live these experiences, learning from my peers and patients. But I remember, as I go about my day, that the people around us are always more that what may meet the eye. You might never guess the true talents of the medical assistant taking your vital signs, but I can tell you that they're there.
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