The only thing standing in the way of Jennifer Landa’s dreams of studying art in college is her grade in chemistry.
Jennifer Landa is an actress, host, and crafter. Her work and YouTube videos have been featured on sites such as BuzzFeed, Craft Magazine, Huffington Post, LEGO.com, and more. As an actress she’s appeared in various commercials over the years and on tv shows like ABC’s Better Off Ted and MTV’s Awkward. As a host, she has appeared on Collider’s Jedi Council, Fusion’s Star Wars: A New Gaming Era, OraTV’s Dweebcast, and more. Currently, she cohosts ForceCenter, a Star Wars podcast dedicated to celebrating all things in that galaxy far, far, away. Jennifer is also a DIY contributor for the official Star Wars blog on StarWars.com. She sometimes goes by the nickname of “Landa Calrissian” and if you haven’t guess by now, Jennifer is really into Star Wars.
This story originally aired on Nov. 16, 2018, in an episode titled “Getting In“.
Story Transcript
I am bad at science. Luckily, I’m an actor so my job has nothing to do with science unless I become a scientist on TV one day.
I’m also a huge Star Wars fan, so knowing that a parsec measures distance not time is about as sciencey as a I get.
My failure in science isn’t from a lack of trying. When I was a kid growing up in the ‘80s, my favorite TV show was 3-2-1 Contact. Yes! PBS. I remember spending hours with my kid microscope kit, carefully placing a strand of hair or a drop of liquid onto the glass slides.
I loved science and science loved me back, until high school. Suddenly, conducting experiments wasn’t about discovering answers. It was about getting the answers right. And when it came to high school biology class, I kept getting the answers wrong.
So what’s a scientifically-mathematically-challenged gal supposed to do when she sucks at science? Become an artist, of course. I wanted to be a real artist, one that hangs out in coffee shops, wears all black, speaks in Morrissey lyrics. I had it all worked out. I was going to be a cool emo kid.
So of course, like any cool emo kid, I picked up a vintage Minolta camera and began taking photographs. What I loved about photography is that my perspective in how I viewed the world mattered, except to my high school classmates who were like something out of a John Hughes movie. I was surrounded by white preppy kids wearing polo shirts who were named Blane, who got BMWs for their sixteenth birthdays, and I was the brown Molly Ringwald. Like Andie in Pretty in Pink, I hid my vulnerability by embracing thrift store clothes and of course put on an I-don't-care attitude.
Being one of a few people of color at my school meant I had a choice. I could either spend four years trying to fit in our four years trying to stand out. I chose to be invisible. I wanted to be invisible so badly I spent every lunch break in the darkroom of my photo class or eating alone in the school library. My plan was that I could just fly under the radar until college and that’s when my real life would begin. I had it all worked out.
But when I told my high school guidance counselor my master plan, she was not impressed. “Okay, yeah, you have good grades all around but that C in biology and that C in chemistry class, you'll never get into any school with those grades.”
The thing is I just wanted to study art at a university. I tried to pitch my extracurricular activities to her but she was not buying it. She actually cut me off and said, “You know, if you want to be an artist, why do you need to go to college?”
I was shocked. “Well, I want to study art.” I could feel my face getting hot.
And she leaned in closer. “You know, a trade school would be great for someone like you.”
Someone like me? Did she mean someone like me, a talented artist? Someone like me who was bad at science? Someone like me as a brown kid? I suddenly felt like I was two inches tall and if I were to try to plead my case to her, she would never hear me. All I could say was, “Okay.”
I remember walking out of her office in a daze until I got home later that afternoon when my mom snapped me out of it. “Well, what did you tell her?”
“I said I wanted to be a photographer and that even though I’m bad at science.”
“Oh, well, why did you say that?”
“Which part?”
“She's doing this because you're Mexican.”
I used to hate when my mom would say that, because she was always right. But her calling it out it meant that I had to deal with it and that went against my motto of being invisible.
“Jennifer, if you want to go to college, you apply and you will get in somewhere. You'll see.”
Moms are always right because I got into the school I wanted, except for one little catch. You see, I had to take a chemistry class at a community college and pass. If I failed, my admission would be revoked and I would have no plan after high school graduation. I had one chemistry class standing between me and my dream of studying at a university.
In May that year, I met with a director in the admissions department. When I met Anita in person, she was so kind and empathetic and she said all I had to do was get a C or better at a chemistry class at college and I'd be able to enroll in the fall. Easy.
At the end of our meeting, she gave me parting words of encouragement. She looked me in the eye and said, “I’m rooting for you.”
In the words of Master Yoda, “Do or do not. There is no try.” So ‘do’ I did.
Unfortunately, what I was doing wasn’t working. I had spent weeks studying, carefully listening to the professor’s lectures but it was clear that my old friend science had now become my enemy.
When the professor posted our grades week after our last class, I was so nervous I took my mom and younger sister with me go look at them. We slowly walked up to the classroom where the final grades were taped to the door. I took a deep breath and looked beside my name. C-minus.
I tried to will that minus sign away but there it was in black and white. I was not going to college. I cried. My mom cried. My sister wondered why everyone was crying.
But when I called Anita, she was actually very understanding. Unfortunately, the final decision wasn’t up to her. She said I had to appeal my case to the Board of Admissions by writing a letter stating why I deserved to go to their university.
I spent a week drafting that letter. Should I be professional? Be comedic? Desperate? I decided I would scoop my heart out of my chest and squeeze it until every last drop of blood filled the pages of white computer paper. I then mailed it and waited.
Several days pass and I hadn’t heard anything from Anita, which was fun but, of course, you guys know, my mom was freaking out. “You should have heard something by now. Why hasn’t she called you? I never asked you, but what did you say in your letter?”
As I explained my heart wrenching process, I saw her eyes begin to widen. Because while my motto was being invisible, my mom’s unspoken rule was that in order to be successful, you have to fit in and do nothing to stand out. And according to her, my letter was going to stand out for being unprofessional because I had written a tearjerker story about, yeah, my triumphs but also some of the pain and prejudice I had experienced growing up as a Mexican-American girl in a predominantly white neighborhood.
“But it’s the truth!”
“Jennifer, they don’t want to hear the truth. The truth is too uncomfortable and painful and sad. No one wants to read that. You should have just said why you want to go to their school.”
I did. One of the reasons I love art is because it’s subjective. There is no right or wrong way to create art. My mom liked science for the same reason I don't. There's lots of rules. But moms are always right and so, on that day, I listened to her. I would rewrite my letter of appeal, hand-deliver it to Anita, and then tell Anita to throw the old one away.
So I spent all day and night rewriting that letter. The next morning I called Anita to tell her the situation but, unfortunately, she was on vacation for a week. So it was over.
It was over a week later when Anita called and she said she had news. There was no need for me to deliver a new letter because she had read my old one. And she loved it. She said that it had made her cry but that, more importantly, she had met with the board. “Congratulations. You've been admitted to the university.”
I cannot tell you how much joy filled our house that day. I cried. My mom cried. My sister wondered why we were all crying. And my mom said something that I will never forget.
She said, “You were right. I should have never told you to change what makes you unique because that’s why you got in. But maybe you might consider majoring in English?”
Master Yoda once said, “The greatest teacher, failure is.” So even though I failed at science a lot, it actually led to some great experiments in my life. The only way to test a hypothesis is to take action and see what the data reveals, right? So my bad grades in chemistry led me to discover that it is a recovery from failure that makes a hero.
And even thought it can feel uncomfortable at times, when you share your most authentic self, good things can happen. Maybe I’m not so bad at science after all.