Overview of Project

 

Research Paper

 

Audio Documentary

 

Photo Documentary

Cover Page

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    “I’m kinda the outgoing one, I’ve always been really loud and in your face, and kind of always really wanted the center of attention, I never really shy back or stay hidden.” At first glance, April might seem like any normal seventeen-year-old teenage girl. She is captain of the cheerleading team and on the Varsity Track team at school. Little do most students at Los Altos High School know that April has a whole second life, in the fashion and modeling industry. “I juggle school and work, but my work is a little different because I do modeling, and it takes a lot of time. I miss a lot of school; I have to travel to L.A. and San Francisco constantly and I miss a lot of other activities kids my age get to do because I’m always busy.”
    April is currently a model for the Ford Modeling Agency in San Francisco. “Usually wake up, get ready for school and start off with school, but there are a couple times a week I get picked up early either in the middle of the day or end of the day and have to drive to San Francisco and then I get there and I do my audition and then I drive back either for track if there’s time or sometimes I get back in time for the end of school. And then there’s some days that I wake up at two am in the morning I have to drive straight to LA and then back in one day, so I miss school completely.” She probably spends on average three months out of the year out of town on modeling shoots, auditions, or runaway shows, all because April’s trying to pursue her dream. “I really love my modeling and I really want to do it as a career, do it my whole life, it just not like—oh right now it’s just the thing to do, it’s just what I love doing and what I want to do with my life.”
    April’s dream, “kinda just popped into my lap” when she was in about 6th grade at a family party. When her mother’s friend suggested modeling, April replied, “why not, it sounds fun and if I could do it that would be awesome.” Modeling for April, “just kind of came to me. I was always really loving the singing, and I thought acting was cool, and modeling I guess just kinda came with that… and I grew to love it like, each time I did it, and we tried out things and I just really enjoyed myself. And I turned out to be pretty good at it I guess so I stuck with it.” She starting at a young age proved that her talent came organically. Her first shoot gave her a lot of attention, “I was twelve, so I think I was in the 7th grade and it was for Gap and when it came out it was this big huge deal cause everyone at school saw it cause it was gap online, so... it was scary but I really liked it too.” Attention and recognition are a few of the advantages of her career, but with every pro there is most like a con.
Forfeiting her social and academic life for her modeling life has been the tough burden April has faced so far. April spends roughly three months out of a year out of town for auditions, shoots, and runaway shows. Missing countless hours of school puts her in a position to keep up with her academics is a more unconventional way. She usually finds herself upholding her grades by studying in the car on the way to San Francisco or Los Angeles, and making up tests for material she wasn’t there to learn due to trying on clothes for people. Tyra Banks once said, “A smart model is a good model,” April’s ability to manage good grades, athletics, and a rising career are just a few of the examples that perceive her intelligence and excellent modeling. Although April claims, “sometimes missing school isn’t so bad” to the contrary she is also missing school activities and events that most kids her age might take for granted, for example school assembles, speakers, Friday spirit activities and so on. “The one I remember the most is 8th grade we had been planning for months to go to a play or something and then two days before my parents were like oh you have a shoot that day you can’t go.” As for her social life, she commented, “Um, I still have one, which is good” because April has to surrender late nights out with her friends for her beauty sleep for the photo shoot in morning. So in the end she doesn’t have a normal teenage life, but that is the risk she is willingly to take for something she loves. “So there’s been things I’ve missed and had to sacrifice, but I dunno I think it’s worth it.”
    April is so passionate about her dream that she is currently not even thinking about going to college, but intends to pursue something she finds truly irresistible: modeling. “Colleges will be there, and I could always do that later in life if I needed to or it doesn’t have to be that way. This is my dream and this is what I want, no college experience is gonna get me like the dream of my dreams cuz like you can’t go to college for modeling, there’s no college like that and so this is like I want my dream more than that, at the moment at least.” April’s modeling dream is like, a little boy at the dinner table staring at the turkey at Thanksgiving; she can smell it, see it, and almost touch it, but all she wants to do is just gobble it up. April will do everything in her power to be a full-time model, because it makes her feel, “like naturally the happiest person ever, but when I am doing a photo shoot or doing a catwalk or something like that its just the most amazing thing ever, and just, I love it. It’s just being in the spot light and being there and it’s such an adrenaline rush but its such a happy moment that its like this is what I want this is where I’m gonna go.”

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