It is a familiar routine; we walk into the classroom and take our seats, pull out our notebooks or laptops and prepare for yet another lecture. Each lesson that passes, we think, is another step towards graduation, towards that perfect job, the reason why we bother to pay attention to dozens of presentations laden with bolded bullet points. College is an “already and not yet” phase in the progression of our careers, a time when our thoughts flutter between the present and the future. In our own self-consumed frenzy, seldom do we think of how our professors find themselves mentoring, lecturing and grading our papers.
While Professor Megan Weaver-Seitz began her teaching journey 10 years ago, like most professors, there was a history before she had her own office brimming with Funko Pop! figurines and a fitting Director Barbie. Like most people, Weaver-Seitz’ dreams began when she was just a child taking in the world around her. “I always wanted to be a storyteller… and so I started writing as soon as I could read. I had so many ideas that would come out of my brain that happened too quickly so I would write on the backs of books about what I was going to write.” Every once in a while, Weaver-Seitz would write these ideas out and share them with whoever would lend a listening ear.
It was through people, notably her mother, and places, children’s theatre and the church, where Weaver-Seitz was able to cultivate her script writing abilities. “I started scripting plays that were probably awful,” laughed Weaver-Seitz, “but we would perform as a youth group in front of the entire congregation and those were some of the first scripts I ever wrote.”
Weaver-Seitz held onto her love of film throughout her youth and went to University of California, Irvine to pursue a degree in film and English. Weaver-Seitz benefited from their film studies program, and even though the English program was not as creative as she had hoped, she learned important lessons. “I’m really glad that I did it. It made me a stronger writer, and what I really got good at doing was listening and hearing people and understanding how they are interpreting something… so God works in mysterious ways.”
After UC Irvine, Weaver-Seitz dove right into her graduate degree at Chapman University continuing her film studies with a focus on directing. “Everyone wanted to do the directing track because everyone always does. They tried to strong-arm me and offer me a fellowship to do production design… and it was a pretty sweet deal, but I stuck to my guns and said, ‘No, I want to come and direct,’ and they accepted me.”
In fact, Weaver-Seitz’ desire to be a director had roots in her childhood which landed her a unique interview with a popular figure. “When I was in seventh grade, we got this assignment from our teacher… to go and find someone in that field to interview. My mom was a real estate agent, and she knew a lot of people. She happened to know someone who knew someone in LA and, I don’t know how she did it, but she plunked me down in front of the director for ‘Planet of the Apes.’”
It was during Weaver’s thesis film “Without Wings,” a film she produced and directed, that Weaver-Seitz’ favorite film moment occurred and where she realized the humanitarian aspects of film. “It was a really personal film for me… it was a catharsis. I knew I had always been oriented towards stories about innocence breaking, having to grow up too fast because that’s kind of how my childhood was.” While the film didn’t win as many awards as Weaver-Seitz wanted it to, that disappointment dissipated the moment she realized the personal impact that film could have. “Something strong hit me because I had a stranger come up to me, and they said, ‘What you said in your film, I needed to hear that.’ Then I knew that I didn’t care if I ever got the Oscar stage. It’s always been about the people, and that was the driving force for me doing anything creatively afterward was to get to that one person.”
In fact, it was not being able to see the special impact that film can have that Weaver decided to leave Hollywood despite her success in casting. “I love to be around those moments when there’s light in a can, where you get this moment that is authentic yet you’re pretending. But there’s humanity in it.” Being in casting, she knew that she would never get to see those moments happen.
After Hollywood, Weaver-Seitz took on freelance jobs and had contracts that were able to sustain the path she was taking. However, after a scandal beyond her control, she lost a third of her income and was catapulted into teaching. “So, these teaching opportunities bubbled out of nowhere. I think that God, not that He took away a third of my income, but He used that opportunity to be like, ‘This is the path I want you to go.’”
While Weaver-Seitz loved teaching, she found herself at several institutions that had a toxic environment. She arrived at Asbury because of Sean Gaffney, but it wasn’t until a year after she visited that she was offered a job opportunity. Contrasting with her negative experiences in higher education, Asbury has been a different experience. “Being here is what was presented to me, and that has been restorative of my faith and honestly restorative of my creativity.”
As Weaver has made her way through the ups and downs of her career journey, and into the unexpected realm of teaching, she has learned that God had a hand in all of it whether it be the moment when that person approached her after her thesis screening, to having her child or her eventual teaching positions.
Whether directing or casting for a film or teaching in a classroom, Weaver-Seitz emphasized the importance of recognizing the humanity at the core of someone’s work. “You have to be human in this industry, and everywhere you go, you cannot forget how important it is to be human with other humans and just to be present with someone.”
