John Walsh, BC ‘17, gave his Agape Latte talk to a captivated audience at Hillside Cafe on Tuesday, November 2nd. Walsh is the director of Creative Video Services at Boston College, and his work includes the Espresso Your Faith Week promo video “Shake It Off,” the Harry Potter-themed admissions video “Special Delivery,” and “That BC Feeling;” a cinematic extravaganza released this past October featuring numerous members of the BC community grooving to Justin Timberlake’s hit song “Can’t Stop the Feeling.”
Walsh described the topic of his talk as “the tension between your head and your heart”, proceeding to describe his journey of self-discovery at BC.
He began by setting the scene as any great filmmaker does. As a sophomore at BC, a friend invited Walsh to an Agape Latte planning meeting. While the group discussed ways to promote the upcoming Espresso Your Faith Week, Walsh offered up an idea for amusic video. At the end of the meeting, Agape Latte asked him if he wanted to make the video a reality.
“I’ll never forget that moment,” Walsh said. “For some reason it felt like my heart was kind of coming out of my chest.” Walsh accepted the opportunity then and there.
The finished product, “Shake It Off”, titled after its featured song by Taylor Swift, became a campus sensation upon its release in September of 2014. The following month, Taylor Swift viewed the video and tweeted it out to her fans. Amidst “the joy and elation of that moment,” said Walsh, “the best part was that Boston College was shown in this beautiful light … everywhere from dining staff, to maintenance, to dance teams, to administrators, to deans.”
“That was the first time I experienced the joy of creativity,” Walsh explained. “It was the first time I’d ever created something that other people were looking at and other people were appreciating.”
Following this heart-pounding opening scene that left the listener assured of Walsh’s destiny as a filmmaker, he shifted to discussing his interior life during his time at BC. After earning an internship with the prominent firm Ernst & Young in the summer after junior year, Walsh explained how his future life as an accountant looked certain.
“I could probably tell you my job title, my salary, the kind of lifestyle I would have had,” Walsh said.
Nevertheless, tension emerged on the halftime retreat in the fall of junior year. Walsh realized he could not answer the three key questions posed by Fr. Michael Himes: “What brings you joy? What are you good at? And who does the world need you to be?”
This tension broke after his poor performance on a challenging accounting quiz. In a classic mentorship scene, Walsh relayed how his professor, Diane Feldman, asked him to come speak with her following the quiz.
“She just said, ‘John, I think you need to have a come-to-Jesus moment, why do you feel the need to fit a square peg in a round hole?’ ”
Walsh spoke with another mentor that evening, Professor Tom Wesner, who told him a quote by Scottish mountaineer William Hutchinson Murray: “The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. Nothing happens until you decide.”
After committing to taking film classes in the spring of his junior year, Providence took hold in Walsh’s life, as he began to meet mentor after mentor in the field of film. He took an unpaid internship at the Boston marketing agency Hill Holliday in addition to helping with videos for BC. He soon found himself with an offer to become the next director of creative videos services at Boston College. However, he still had one more film to make before he knew the job was for him.
Faced with the decision of accepting or declining the offer from BC, Walsh decided to make an autobiographical film for his senior thesis, starring his roommate as himself, who portrayed what his life would have looked like had he taken a job in accounting.
“I saw that as a tragedy”, Walsh said. Needless to say, he took the job at BC.
“When you think about your own journey with the head and the heart,” Walsh said, “have faith that Providence is at work too in that tension. Have faith that tension is actually drawing you to be a better version of yourself and a better version of yourself than you could maybe even have imagined in the first place.”
The full talk can be viewed on Agape Latte’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAsIZJvU4NY&t=385s
Thomas is a student in BC’s Carroll School of Management, who fittingly serves as the current Business Manager of The Torch in addition to his position as Campus News Editor. Thomas can be found around campus singing at Masses with the Liturgy Arts Group, tabling for the BC Pro-Life Club, deep in conversation while enjoying BC Dining cuisine, or gazing in awe at Gasson Hall and its Collegiate Gothic style architectural neighbors.
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