My name is Halley Linscheid, I’m a Senior at UM getting a BFA in Media Arts with an emphasis in digital filmmaking. Before college, I took a gap year, and my traveling was cut 10 weeks short because of Covid. For that reason, I already felt somewhat trapped moving to Missoula and wanted to go somewhere huge compared to here for my Beyond the Classroom Experience. I originally wanted to study abroad but there weren’t many film programs available in English, and since I have always wanted to live in New York, one of the best places to study filmmaking in the world, I thought it would be the perfect fit to spend my semester there. When I arrived in New York I had an image of it that is shared amongst many people who have never been to such a large and romanticized city. After a few days, I started to understand what it was really like to live there but ended up loving it all the same, just for different reasons. I was able to do a lot of things I wasn’t able to do in Missoula like create relationships with a wide variety of people, eat a ton of different types of foods, go out to large shows, comedy events, and museums, be truly on my own, see a different perspective on filmmaking, and gain connections that could help me move back to New York if I choose to pursue filmmaking there.

New York was perfect in many ways. Although it’s nice to be back in Missoula, and it’s much easier to live here than there, I miss New York very much and more every day! Surprisingly, one of the things I miss the most is sitting on the Subway for longs period of time, which you definitely can’t find in Montana (-:

Me biking across the Williamsburg Bridge on my last night in New York.