An Uphill Battle: A Conversation with Dr. Elaine Venter

 Dr. Elaine Venter is a mass communications professor, advisor, e-sports coach, and an altogether remarkable member of the CMU community. Her classes are beloved by her students for both the engaging content and valuable lessons that are learned, as well as the wonderful memories made in a room with a professor who genuinely loves what she does. What many of her students may not know is the incredible amount of effort she has put into becoming the teacher they love. She has worked incredibly hard and come so far, and she still wants to work harder and go farther.  Through a 10,000-mile journey across the sea and more than eight years working on her postgraduate career, Dr. Venter is an inspiration and role model to anyone lucky enough to take her classes.

 "There's that saying that if you love what you do, you never work a day in your life. But I think if you really love what you do, then it's worth working for."  -Anonymous 

Q: To get started, can you tell me about where you’re from?

A: It’s a little complicated, but I’ll do my best to make sense of it. I was born and raised in South Africa until I was 13, and then my family immigrated to Fresno, California. I ended up living within California for around 10 years, though I moved from city to city quite a bit. I ended up here in Colorado in 2017 after applying for a job here at the university.

Q: What was it like to immigrate at that age?

A: Difficult. I was at an age where I set what I thought were my roots, friends and ideas that made me obstinate about leaving. Looking back, it was a difficult age to immigrate because I really had that shock of knowing what had changed around me, and how different things were. Despite all that, I think it’s working out alright.

Q: Dealing with that as a teenager must have been difficult. Did you have problems with culture shock or feeling disoriented?

A: Oh, absolutely. What’s funny is that after all this time here, I still sometimes get culture shock. It was there a lot more when I was younger, but every now and again I’m sometimes caught for a loop, like I’ll hear something and go “oh that’s right I wasn’t here for that,” so there’s a kind of blank space of cultural emptiness that catches me. That cultural aspect is really the way in which people connect with each other, so sometimes it was like having a missed connection.

Q: That sounds like it could be disorienting. Speaking of changes, what’s the story of how you became a professor here at CMU?

A: It’s kind of a long story. When I first started on my studies, I had wanted to be a Public Relations Specialist for Cirque du Soleil. That interest in entertainment PR had me in some really cool programs, and I found that communications studies just made sense for me. I ended up graduating with my BA in three years, so my parents told to me to take that extra time and explore the world. I ended up doing a lot of cool stuff, I actually spent some time doing some Au Pair work in Belgium for a French family. I was there at a time when there was a lot of tension between the French government and undocumented immigrants from Africa, and since I was pretty close to the situation, I wanted to learn a lot more about it. It really sparked an interest in international media, so I went to grad school and got my master’s in international studies. Media has always been my thread, but I jumped around a lot on what I wanted to do. At one point, I got a position as an adjunct professor and taught some classes online. I absolutely fell in love with teaching, and I knew what I had to do from there. While I was working on my doctorate’s a friend told me about an open position here, and I suppose they liked me enough to hire me, because I’m still here three and a half years later.

Q: Wow, It’s been a really long journey for you. You said that media has always been your “thread”, what made you fall in love with that specific subject?

A: Ever since I was a kid, it’s really just always been my anchor. The internet came to South Africa a few years after it had been popular here, but even before that, I loved all sorts of media. I remember playing video games at the mall, and my mom passing on her love for books to me and my sister. From there my love just grew, and I got into comic books, some cartoon TV shows, and especially music! It’s all tied up in the world I grew up in, and it was even one of the things that got me through immigrating. There were some shows I had watched as a kid that was also around here in America, and it was so nice to finally feel like I could recognize something. Media is so consistently a big part of my life, I don’t know if it was possible not to love it.

Q: I guess you love it a lot, to go through the effort of getting a Ph.D. in that subject. Even though you love it, you said it’s been a difficult path. What would you say was the hardest part about getting your Ph.D.?

A: That’s such a big question for me. I don’t want to say the whole thing, but the whole thing really was a lot. Looking back now, I was in that process for a long time, and it was so incredibly hard. You really have to have the tenacity to keep going, and the energy- even if you feel completely like you cannot keep going, you have to stick with it and be willing to put in that extraneous effort. There were times when I thought I wanted to quit, but I was lucky to have amazingly supportive parents that encouraged me through the whole thing. I think the hardest part is more mental than anything, that strain of not being able to go out with friends or have a Christmas vacation because you have deadlines to meet. It’s just such an intense amount of work that can feel really overwhelming. I was lucky to have such a great support system: my parents, friends, and my mentor. I don’t think I could have done it without them.

Q: It’s admirable to see how much work you’ve put into doing something you love. If you could go back towards the beginning of that journey, would you have any advice to give yourself?

A: Get a therapist. I wish I had gotten a therapist even though I had my family and everything, because I think having a professional to talk to while you’re facing some of the most grueling mental pressure of your life is really important. There were a couple times that I hit a block, and it was the most frustrated I’d ever felt in my life. I couldn’t talk to my family about it because I was so frustrated, I would just bite their heads off, so that probably would have been a good time to go talk to a therapist. It can be a lot to handle, and knowing what I do now, I think I could have saved myself a good deal of trouble had I just gotten that professional help.

Q: That’s great advice, especially because it’s not something a lot of people would even think about. Now that you’re officially Dr. Venter, do you have any plans for the future?

A: I actually feel a lot of pressure to do a lot more. Because I was still working on my Ph.D. when I got my job, I never really did much of the “normal” professorship things, I didn’t get to go to many conferences or do any publications. That’s my next step, I have a lot of really interesting ideas set aside that I’d really like to start working on. I really just love what I do, and anything that helps me stay in this position is something worth working on.