Written by Sophie Brawn.
When Sophie isn’t working as a Content Editor at Novel Entertainment, she is ruthlessly climbing her way up the Tiddlywinks World rankings.
When I was 12, I decided I was going to study maths at the University of Cambridge. At the end of my first year, sitting in my room at Murray Edwards College and staring at the maths problem in front of me, it occurred to me that unquestioningly following the whim of 12-year-old me for 7 years maybe hadn’t been the best idea.
My first year at university wasn’t fun. I was fast discovering that my enjoyment of maths was far more closely related to how easy I found it than I’d realised, and maths at Cambridge wasn’t easy. As I approached the end of my first year I found myself in rather a tricky situation, entirely of my own making, and with a choice to make.
When I was 14, my Mum bought me the entire series of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ on video for Christmas. We watched the show together, consuming several episodes a week, and in just over 2 years we got through all 7 seasons of ‘Buffy’ and the 5 seasons of its spin-off ‘Angel’.
I enjoyed it: it was entertaining, it was funny, it was dramatic, it contained sympathetic characters who went on engaging journeys. It was a solid show. So solid that several years later I rewatched the show with my brother. Again, I enjoyed it (and while he never said anything to me directly, he did let me get through all 12 seasons in under a year, so I can only infer that he enjoyed it too.)
And so it was that at 19, at something of a personal low point, I found myself returning to this comfort show once again. Except this time, I got more into it (principally out of a desire to do literally anything other than study maths). I went on forums, I watched video essays, and I discovered that under the surface of this quirkily charming show there was a lot more going on than I’d given it credit for.
The show is about a girl, Buffy, who fights monsters (yes, lots of vampires but also a great many other types of demon by the end of the 7-season run). However it is also a show about a young woman learning how to grow up.
At the start of the show Buffy is 16, an age where we are beginning to put our childhood behind us and discover the kind of adult we are going to be. All of the monsters she faces are metaphors for impediments to growing up and Buffy must overcome these impediments if she is to grow into her authentic self. And the way she must do this is by making authentic choices.
At its core, it is a show about choices. Buffy is consistently having to make difficult choices to fulfil her role as the slayer. She has to sacrifice loved ones to save the world. She has to sacrifice her own happiness for the sake of her peers. There are times when Buffy neglects to choose, acts as if she doesn’t have a choice, and bad things always follow.
But when Buffy chooses, she saves the world. She is the slayer. She grows up.
In the final term of my first year, I had a choice to make. I could continue to study maths, and this was by far the easier option. I was already doing it after all. I wouldn’t have to have any difficult conversations with people who had known me for the past 7 years as the one who wanted to study maths. I also wouldn’t have to lose face, to deal with being the person who ‘couldn’t handle’ studying maths at Cambridge; the person who changed from a prestigious degree to something less generally revered.
Ultimately, none of these were good reasons to make my choice. They weren’t authentic reasons. If I was going to continue studying maths then I would be doing it for the sake of others, and I didn’t want to live like that anymore. So I did what Buffy would do and I made the difficult choice, and four years later I graduated with a degree in Psychology and a far better grasp of who I am as a person.
If I hadn’t rediscovered Buffy in that final term of my first year, I’m not convinced I would have had the courage to make the difficult choice. That’s why I now want to work in television, to create content that can inspire, educate and ultimately help people in the way that Buffy helped me.