Film School at 24?! | How I Got Here (Storytime)

Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would end up here. Right now, I'm sitting in my family home on August 31st, eating casserole and processing the fact that I'm starting school in only two weeks, at the ripe old age of 24. I'm sure the questions on anyone reading this' mind, how did I end up here? Why am I doing this? Why do you still look 16? (That's just genetics, unfortunately.) 

The full story of how I got here is filled with twists and turns, but ultimately this is the story of how God pulled me by the scruff of my collar and placed me - mostly against my will - on the path I was always meant to go. (And yes, trigger warning, I am a Christian, but trust me, this is still one hell of a tale. But I understand if that would be the reason you don't read any further!) 

Alright, let's get into it. 

PART 1: CHILDHOOD 

I was the family storyteller. I was born to a pair of young-looking parents in 2002 in Niagara Falls, and from as early as five, I loved to tell stories. I have an active imagination, and spent most of my time in my head, playing with my stuffed animals and making up stories about how they lived their life while I was gone. (Toy Story was a devastating film experience for me as a kid.) Despite not having many friends as a child and keeping largely to myself, I would tell my tales to any soul that would listen. One of my earliest childhood memories was of me telling an older boy at church all about my stories and him patiently nodding along. :) 

As I got older, my love of stories never let up, but I always thought the only way to preserve them and have them told was to write them down. So I did. The moment I learned how computers worked, I wrote endless documents of ideas, and I got good at it. I loved to write, it was my outlet to get my ideas out of me and put them somewhere else. If asked what my dream career would be, I would always say writer. I think everyone in my immediate and extended circle knew that about me, it was synonymous with my identity, "quiet writer girl". 

But I loved movies, too. The Chronicles of Narnia (2005) and its equally amazing sequel Prince Caspian (2008) were the first films I watched that turned that creative spark in me into an all-out inferno. I adored them, and made my family watch it with me constantly. It was pure magic and I wanted to create that kind of wonder, too. I wrote elaborate fantasy stories with aliens and superpowers (shout out "Terrific Twelve" with its blue shapeshifting aliens with floating hair). I turned all my friends into superheroes, and my TV crush (hi Karan Brar) as the dastardly morally grey hero torn between his allegiance to the villains and to the cool, main character that he loves. (I was ten, I didn't even know what romantasy was.) 

Eventually, when my sister and I decided to stop fighting with each other, we created stories together, too. We would act them out, taking on the roles of the characters and acted out our adventures. We never had any costumes or anything (we couldn't afford any), but we had our imagination - and sometimes props, in the form of our Hobbit-themed LEGOs. 

circa. 2014, a foul murder caught on camera

And boy, did we have fun. We would have bits going that would last for days, even weeks, and everytime we'd act out a story, I'd scribble them down in a beat-up notebook as "TV shows", with endless "episode lists" of the scenarios we'd come up with. These became some of my most treasured memories, even more than writing my books, because there was something so inherently satisfying about inhabiting a story and bringing it to life. To be able to step into any world you wanted and be that character for a moment was exciting! No need to write it down, you could just be. The acting was rudimentary and we never recorded anything that could be considered a "film" (save for one attempt at LEGO stop motion), but we had incredible amounts of fun. 

But filmmaking never crossed my mind. 

Never. 

Not even once. 

Bear in mind, I was the child of two immigrants, neither of whom considered the arts a reliable way of making money, so, in my pubescent brain, it wasn't a career option -- even though I scrawled "Directed by meeeee" in my diary when I was 9, and spent hours watching endless behind-the-scenes footage of The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, and then any other film I loved. There were pipe dreams, and then there was filmmaking, so far out of my realm of possibility that I didn't even entertain it. Why would a nobody from a city in Canada nobody knows exists be a filmmaker? Me? The quiet girl who'd rather sit in a box with her doll than talk to anyone, making movies? Nah. I don't even think I got far enough into thinking about it to rule myself unfit for it. 

I had my books, and that was enough. I could be a writer, and that would make me happy, and I'd publish a few books before going back to my normal, acceptable job that I was supposed to do. I thought this way even after the summer of thirteen, when my friends and I cooked up a plot to make a movie (as all teenagers do) and I took it way too seriously, and made us write a script. We even shot some scenes out in our local park! Unfortunately, we never finished it, but I still whole those memories close to my heart even ten years later. 

PART 2: HIGH SCHOOL

September 2017 

With my failed movie attempt under my belt, I embarked on the next phase of my journey. Up until this point, I had been homeschooled, so starting high school in Grade 11 was going to be my next big challenge. By the fall of 2017, novel writing was very much still my big thing, although the chaos of day to day life and the overwhelming nature of being exposed to all these new people didn't leave much time to work on it. I wrote a lot less, I had fewer fandoms during that time, it wasn't great. 

I was lost when it came to my career. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I considered being a writer as a little kid, but I told everyone I would be a pediatrician (that didn't last). My dad was very big on healthy living, so maybe nutritionist would be the way to go. Eventually I settled on being a doctor in August 2018, with the hopes of opening my own clinic. 

But still films and TV continued to hold a uniquely special place in my heart that I couldn't describe. When I found out that one of the guys a grade below me was trying to get a school sitcom made, I immediately auditioned. I never considered myself an actress (I still don't), but I knew I wanted to be part of it. It was my first time walking in to the drama classroom, and I remember auditioning, script in my hand, and feeling so unexpectedly confident despite my anxiety, and I got casted in it! As a distant side character, but still. Even when the project fell through, it remained something that I was extremely proud of. 

"I went from the girl who fell down the stairs and limped into Biology, to the girl people see and smile at in the hallway, the girl who is one of the Yearbook executives, the girl who is starring in the school sitcom … I did something! I’m a somebody. :) That feels good." (June 20, 2018) 

Another notable event of my high school years was Ms. Caldwell's Media Studies class in 11th grade, where we studied movies, including Lord of the Rings, and I did a PowerPoint presentation on romance movies and the trope of kissing in the rain. She even took us to the theater to see Ready Player One when it came out. I loved that class, and ended the semester with an 85, one of the highest grades in any of my classes. 

And yet. Filmmaker? Not a thought. Maybe an actress, if I wanted to be extra delusional one night, but never a director. In my mind, a doctor was the only acceptable option. So, when I graduated, I made the worst decision one could ever make...

PART 3: BROCK UNIVERSITY

September 2019

The number one thing I would tell to anyone about to graduate, including my own future kids, is do not, and I mean NOT, go to university right out of high school without a clear idea of what you want to do. Ever. You'll have people telling you otherwise, but don't listen to them. You need to be absolutely passionate for what you're doing to spend that much money and that much time getting a degree for it. 

But when I made that cardinal error, I didn't realize it was at first. My parents were excited, my sister was happy for me, I was going to university to study Public Health (to do what, we weren't sure!) but that didn't matter as long as I was going to uni. It was in my hometown, a 45-min bus ride away, both my sister and mom were also going for Psychology degrees. I was going to be the 3rd Tehrani in my family to come away with a uni degree, and I was going to do great things with my life and make lots of money with some high paying job I got by the time I was 23. 

And you know what? The first year? Not bad. I did decent. My grades were good. 

Then COVID-19 hit. 

And everything crashed and burned. 

Turns out, I'm not an academic! At all! (Not like my high school grades in Math and Biology could've told you that already.) I failed my second year of Public Health, and pivoted to a Community Health degree. Filed the paperwork and gave it another go. 

But during the never-ending emptiness that was the covid-era, I started watching movies - more than I had in my entire life. 

102 films! A record I still haven't been able to beat. But I watched everything; good films, bad films, classic old films, new blockbusters. From The Parent Trap to Iron Man to The Nightmare Before Christmas to Nolan's Batman trilogy, to all eight Harry Potter films, I devoured as much cinema as my brain could handle, all the things that I had been putting off watching over the years, and my love of movies grew even more. 

I even took a career quiz for one of my classes and got "Script Supervisor" and "Director" as one of the top 10 jobs! I even bought a book called "Writing Screenplays That Sell" from the bookstore because I wanted to know how to write great ones. 

But still, I remained in denial. This journal entry from August 10, 2020 explained it best - 

"These past few days I've become more and more fascinated by movies! I like watching them and studying what makes them work, compared to what doesn't work. Studying acting, writing, design. I know every role on a movie set, an average work day on said movie set, filmmaking process. [...] On top of all of this, I've been watching lots of video essays, soaking up professional knowledge like a sponge. It's crazy, I'm obsessed. [...] I keep dreaming about going to the Oscars. I want to go and I want to win. I just...I love movies. I love watching them, writing them, listening to their soundtracks.

But I need to be sensible. I need a job. Public Health can get me a job, a good one too, so I can provide for myself. Sure, I love cinema but it's competitive. I need to be logical. People like me don't become award-winning screenwriters or actresses. Does that break my heart? Yes. But it's true. No matter what I do, how much I dream, unless God Himself wills it, I will never be a screenwriter or an actress. That's not in the cards for me." 

There was a lot more "woe is me" bullshit that I cut out, but that was the gist of it. What I really wanted to do was smothered under a pile of immigrant-kid guilt and geographic unluckiness - or so I thought. I was convinced that what was standing in my way was my circumstances, but really, it was me and my unwillingness to step out of my comfort zone. To try something entirely new for the love of it, not because I thought that's what everyone wanted me to do. 

But because of my newfound film obsession, on my 2nd attempt at making it past second year, I began branching out with my electives, and took DART 1P96, Script Analysis. I can still remember the course code because it ended up being one of my funnest online classes. I got to read plays and an actual puppeteer and playwright visited our class to talk to us about his craft. I loved every second of it, and came away with a very respectable 73%. Which at that time, was a massive accomplishment, considering I was pulling in 50s and 60s, and even 40s, in all my other courses. Script Analysis was a clear outlier. 

It seemed storytelling was the only realm I was getting any success in, but did that change my mind? Nope. I continued to bang my head on the university wall and failed school three more times between 2021 and 2024. Until finally, in May 2024, enough was enough. In a massively controversial and terrifying decision, I pulled the plug and dropped out. 

PART 4: THE DROP-OUT ERA CRISIS

May 13, 2024

In that moment, I felt both relief and shame in equal measure. On one hand, I was free from the horrors of academic life. But on the other hand, I had failed in the one thing I felt I had to do. You could say, "Why didn't you drop out earlier?" It wasn't that simple, I genuinely felt I had no other choice. I had to get a degree in order to get a job. That's how it's always been done, and I failed at that. 

Shame ate at me for months after that. In the fall of 2024, my mental health collapsed. Panic attacks became my norm, and I felt disassociated from my body. I didn't know who I was or what I was going to do. I considered killing myself, or checking myself into a psych ward. I couldn't sleep and barely ate, cried constantly, and everyone felt like a stranger to me, even myself. I was terrified of death but couldn't bear to live the way I currently was. 

Thank God my sister convinced me to go to therapy. I met with a lovely therapist for several months from end of October 2024 to February 2025, and I was able to work through all the issues that came about as a result of my years at uni, including those complicated feelings of failure. Eventually, I was able to stabilize my severe anxiety enough to function, but that still left me with the question of "What do I do now?" I had a lot of free time, now I had to decide what I wanted to do with it. 

And that's where God stepped in. 

But first, we need to roll it back to several years earlier, because there's one tiny part (and person) I haven't mentioned yet. 

PART 5: THE PLOT TWIST

In the summer of 2021, August to be exact, I had reached a low point. I had been rejected by a guy I thought I'd be with, and I was still failing classes everywhere I turned. I was depressed, heartbroken, full of shame - so, the perfect time to attend a Survivor-themed camping weekend (shout out Pastor Matt). But as soon as my feet made contact with the dirt, I felt more lost and lonely than ever before. I remember walking far away from where the rest of the campers were gathered around the fire, and falling to my knees in the wet grass, looking up at the sea of stars and crying, begging God for help. 

That weekend ended up being my come to Jesus moment. On the last day before I returned home, we sang a worship song, called "Make Room", and that song ended up becoming less of a worship moment, and more of a promise. The lyrics basically said, "I will make room for You to do whatever You want to." It was me laying down my own plans and allowing God to finally (FINALLY) move in my life and do what He wanted to do instead. Of course, it would still be three years before I dropped out, but it was the first snowball in an avalanche. 

Then in October 2021, I watched a small, unknown show called The Chosen. (You might think I'm being sarcastic, but I'm serious! Not many people knew about the show back then.) (If you're not familiar, it's a historical drama show about the life of Jesus.) Obviously, it helped my spiritual life greatly by getting me to see God in a new way, and I ended up getting baptized because of how moved I was by Jesus' character in the series, and if that's really what Jesus could be like, then I wanted to follow Him. 

But the real impact came in the form of the actor who played Judas on the show, Luke Dimyan. 

I quite quickly became a fan of his, not only because of how talented he was in the role (he kills it every time and totally changed my mind about that Biblical figure) but by how funny and creative he was outside of it. As I continued to struggle in my academic pursuits, I would take a break from it by watching the comedy skits and sketches he would post that always had me rolling on the floor laughing. (Highly recommend Slap Happy, that one's comedy gold.) He was a bright spot in an otherwise grim time. 

But aside from funny videos, Luke was incredibly candid and open about his experiences in the industry. It was my first time getting to hear someone like me talk about working in film - a person of colour (specifically Middle Eastern-North African) in their 20s with big dreams. His parents didn't want him going into this career, but he loved it so much that he went ahead and did it, because he wanted to be the kind of creator who inspired and made people dream the same way movies did for him. 

His passion for it spoke to me, especially after I dropped out. I was toying with the idea of entering the film world, but I had only ever seen stories of people who had already made it. This was the first time I heard the perspective of an artist who was still trying to make it. You never realize how rarely you hear that side of the industry, until you do. I hadn't considered that I could try and make it, too. I always thought that to be anything in the film world I had to get lucky, get picked by a rich white producer out of thousands and become an overnight success - I didn't see that there was a steep climb you could make to get there on your own. That ANYONE could have a place in art regardless of geography. It gave me hope. I kept watching Luke's interviews and podcasts between 2022-23, as many as I could find, and every time he would give advice to young artists coming into the industry, it felt as if he was indirectly talking to me, saying exactly what I needed to hear to nudge me closer to my real dream. 

I began researching the Canadian film industry, and I realized that it was growing, that it was bringing in revenue. It wasn't anything like Hollywood, but at least there was an art space that I hadn't realized was there before. Then in 2023, the Writer's Guild Strike happened in Los Angeles, and despite still being in school, I was invested in its outcome. That's when I knew something was happening, but I continued to deny it for a good while after because I couldn't get out of my own head. 

PART 6: GOING ALL-IN

The breakthrough came on April 11, 2025, at around 3:52 pm, when I was running errands for my best friend's wedding and scrawled this entry the moment I came home: 

"I just got home from running errands and I was in the Uber, and I got a little down, so I started praying, 'I just need a sign, that my heart will be ok, that everything will be ok. I just need a sign that I'm going in the right direction with films.' And right after I stopped, the car slowed down and I could hear the radio better just in time to hear an ad and a woman saying, 'I'll write, direct, star and produce my own summer blockbuster!' Bruh. What timing. God is hilarious. That was crazy."

That was all I needed to hear. After that, I was committed to it, but I still needed to wait a summer before I could seriously do anything. I had loans to pay off from my time at uni, and I still needed to recover physically and mentally from my mental health crisis and autoimmune disease (that's an entirely different story). 

But in early 2026, it was time to make a decision and put all my eggs in the film basket. I hadn't made anything in my life up until that point, so I needed skills, and film school was a natural choice. I needed to get a camera in my hand and surround myself with likeminded artists and professors who could help me figure out how to become what I always wanted to be. 

But that begged the question of...where? 

My first pick was Toronto Film School or TMU. If I was going to do this, I wanted to do it right and to its fullest extent. "Don't half-ass it," was what my mom said to me when I decided to apply, and I was taking that fully to heart. But as I looked into schools, I began to rule them out. Toronto Film School received questionable reports, so it ended up being a contest between TMU and York, with Sheridan as a distant third. I wanted York, but discovered it was too theory heavy, and I wanted hands-on skills and practise. 

That left TMU and Sheridan. I didn't want Sheridan, because I heard that they didn't have supplementary application material as a requirement, and I wanted to prove I had what it takes to be there and ensure I would get accepted. So I focused all my energy on TMU, but as I worked on my application, I began to struggle. The items I had to submit didn't feel on-par with the standards I felt I needed to reach to be accepted, and I began to doubt myself. Could I really do this, having never made anything? 

Until one afternoon, I was in the shower and prayed for help on what school to choose, and I felt God telling me to apply to Sheridan, and said, "You don't need to prove yourself beforehand. You can prove yourself when you get in." I resolved to apply to both, until I discovered the application fees for both schools were incredibly steep, and I was forced to choose. I decided to go with God's pick over my own, and gambled on Sheridan, sending in only my high school transcript and none of the other stuff I had prepared for TMU. 

And on March 27, 2026, it actually worked. Coincidentally, the day I was accepted was the same day that my best friend's husband was on a boy's trip, so she came to spend the night with my sister and I at our house for a girl's night, and was lounging in my room when I opened my e-mail and saw the acceptance letter. "Serenity....?" I said, partially in shock, while she scrolled on TikTok behind me. Initially she was worried, until she saw what it was. It was a beautiful moment of all three of us being able to celebrate together - I think we screamed so loud the entire neighbourhood heard! 

Me right after getting accepted 

I still have no idea how I got in, but I'm going to chalk it up to a miracle. 

A month later and a week before my 24th birthday, I found out that Luke Dimyan had gotten a Cameo for the first time, and was able to purchase one asking him for advice before starting film school, and he sent me an almost 4-minute video filled with advice, and as always, exactly what I needed to hear. 

"It's okay to make bad art. If anything, you should be excited to make bad art. There's so much more that you make that builds you up to those places of success. So don't be afraid about making it perfect. Just be afraid about making it in the first place. Just make it. You'll learn how to make it better. If you have an idea, make it happen. And don't be afraid to make it as bonkers and as crazy as you possibly can, and then learn from that experience and then make the next one." 

PART 7: THE WAITING ROOM

The journey hasn't been easy, and now, with only a week left before I start, it still isn't easy. Getting finances, transportation, as well as my own mind and health in order has been a challenge. But it's one that I do with a full heart and a smile on my face, because there is nothing on Earth more fulfilling than knowing you're where you are meant to be. But there's a responsibility to it, too. You know the burden is on you to do your best and make it happen. Sure, God will help you, but at the end of the day, film is not an easy path to walk. There's nothing easy about a career in art, but I'm sure when I make my first project and I start my first class, there's nowhere I'd rather be and nothing else I'd rather be doing. 

One last Luke quote -

"Whatever hit or making it, you expect it to be, it doesn't really happen. And you realize life as an artist, life as a director, actor, writer is just continual. So really enjoy that process, do not be afraid of failure and take each and every day as an opportunity to learn something new. So, have the best time going to film school, becoming a director, Grace. I'm so excited for your future, okay? You're gonna do great."

To conclude, yes, God does care about what you do with your career. Yes, you can absolutely do whatever you set your heart and mind on to do. I'll keep both those truths with me as I go into Orientation Week. I just hope I will make all the people that believed in me proud, and I'll see them with my degree on the other side.