Check out the latest episode of Work of Art: The Mason Gross Podcast. In each episode, we speak with Mason Gross students, faculty, and guest artists, discussing what fuels their curiosity, their passion, and their impulse to make. This week, we sat down with filmmaking student Kirsten Pasewaldt.

It took Kirsten Pasewaldt a while to admit that she wanted—no, had to be a filmmaker. She felt pressure to pursue a more-practical path, and inched her way toward film, from a major in communications, to a major in cinema studies, and, eventually, to the BFA in Filmmaking program at Mason Gross.

This transformation hasn’t occurred in isolation. Pasewaldt, who is in her fourth year, has found inspiration and solace in the work of faculty member Danielle Lessovitz, and in the works of filmmaker Eliza Hittman. As she tells it, Hittman validates Pasewaldt’s own experience, as a girl in the suburbs; seeing herself, or a version of herself, has meant everything.