For many undergraduate students nearing the end of their fourth year, graduating college and entering the real world feels daunting and uncertain. For others, the future after college is clear. UC Santa Barbara alumna Julia Marsh is one of those grads who was ready to forge her way to professional success after building the necessary skills while completing her undergraduate degree. Today, she is a successful graphic designer and graduate student in New York, preparing for a future in a field she loves.
Marsh is a 24-year-old from Carmel, a small town on the coast of Northern California. Her college journey started in 2011. While she loved art, she thought it was too impractical a field to pursue as a career so she chose to study writing. In her freshman year, Marsh decided to apply for a job at The Daily Nexus, the student run newspaper on campus. She became fast friends with the design director at the paper, who convinced her to take an available position working in layout. Within a few short months, she took over the role of design director.
Filmmaker Lisa Russell, a UC Santa Barbara alum, travels across the globe to inspire to create a global network of artists for social good.
“The challenge and priority for me now is that I really want to teach. I want to inspire and train responsible storytellers,” Russell said in a recent interview.
When graduating from college, one can feel anxious about finding the first post-grad job in the ‘real’ world. But Film and Media alumna Isabelle Carasso’s story offers solace to those of us worrying about leaving the university. She dove head-first into a highly competitive field - the entertainment industry - and got a job as a Page at NBCUniversal.
Carasso graduated in 2016, but now lives in Los Angeles and now works on the development of television shows that are ready to be produced.
Verenice Zuniga, who graduated in 2017 with an emphasis in acting , has received an Indy Award from Santa Barbara’s The Independant newspaper, for her lead performance last May in the play Lydia by Octavio Solis. Zuniga says her BFA in Theater provided a rigorous program that prepared her the real world.
Insults can be used to empower people rather than demean them, says Chloe Brotherton, who won the 2017 Undergraduate Research Slam with her presentation “A ‘Bitch’ by Any Other Name: Reclaiming Gendered Insult Terms.” Brotherton, who graduated from UC Santa Barbara in Linguistics, is now a graduate student at UC Davis.
Trina Lazzara graduated last spring with two degrees from UC Santa Barbara, one in Psychology and one in English Literature. Throughout her time at UCSB, Lazzara was active in the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts as an English research assistant and as a mentor in the Campus Learning Assistance Services. She is currently tutoring young students in writing while volunteering at a domestic abuse treatment center in Fremont, California. Lazzara, who aims to become a social worker, says her passion for social justice combined with her undergraduate experience to place her on the road to success.
