Beaver Reflections:
I went to Beaver from 6th grade to my senior year, so I had some middle school, junior high, and high school. I graduated in 1997. It was a great, intimate educational experience. One thing that stood out was it was an encouraging environment. They encourage you to do as many sports as possible regardless of your ability. They encourage the arts as well. And, obviously, academics, but to me academics is a given as a high schooler. Also, I didn’t realize it at the time, but there was a big safety net. I remember trying certain art programs or trying to start a club and if it didn’t work, I didn’t feel any sort of pressure or embarrassment. Not everything has to be the best. It creates a good environment to let people explore. Everyone was approachable on the faculty, too. Mr. McCarthy, who taught biology, was this old school Bostonian conservative guy with really progressive and future-looking perspectives. He taught us to think outside the box. He would say outlandish things and then support it with evidence, and he’d say it with this thick Boston accent.
What is #happeningnow in your life:
I went to film school. For a year after that I lived in New York City learning filmmaking and teaching filmmaking classes. Then I moved to LA where I taught film and interned at production companies. Eventually, I got signed with some representation and turned that into a career making music videos and TV commercials. That occupied about 10 years of my life. Over the last two or three years I’ve been trying to segue into long form, specifically feature films. I just finished a script during the pandemic. It’s a sort of dark comedy and I’m working on getting that made. We’re on the precipice of getting that put into production. I hope to direct it. In the last two years I got married and I just had a baby six months ago. During the whole pandemic my wife has been pregnant or with a newborn, so our safety precautions have been exaggerated. It’s given us a lot of perspective. We feel very blessed and know people have had it way harder. Whenever I think of the insurmountable tasks ahead of us, I try to think of the things we can control. That might be as simple as controlling what I do for dinner, or putting effort and thought into my baby’s schedule to make sure he eats on time and sleeps on time, and that will get us better sleep, and that means I can get more creative during the day. Anything you can focus on, anything that’s within your control, helps you.
“I’ve been very humbled by the pandemic and I’m learning a lot. There has been this understanding that permanence is not a given.”
– Dori Oskowitz ’97
Advice to current Beaver Students:
Things are changing at a rate that makes us all kind of newcomers, so I think I’d rather stay humble at this point and say that there’s a lot to be learned. We’re all adapting, we’re all learning.
