Student affairs administration graduate student T.J. Jourian has made many transitions throughout his college career.
He faced all the usual challenges of college versus high school as well as living on your own for the first time as an international student. On top of assimilating to the new culture, Jourian was beginning to live his life as a man.
Jourian was born in Cyprus as a female and later discovered he was meant to be male.
In the documentary series "TransGeneration," Sundance Channel followed four transgender college students to get a look inside their lives. Jourian is one of the students featured in the documentary.
He took some time to chat with The State News about the experience.
State News: How did you get involved in the documentary?
T.J. Jourian: I received one of many announcements that they made on trans-specific listservs, and I decided to e-mail them back.
I got a phone interview, and then the director came to MSU early in August 2004 and we had a casting call. I was selected for the documentary after that.
SN: Was your involvement in the documentary a positive experience?
T.J.: It was actually a lot less intrusive than I thought it would be. The director is really good at just being able to disappear in the background when he's filming and just letting people do their thing. He doesn't put in his two cents — so it was very much our story.
It offered me a lot of opportunities to do some self reflection. I think there's been a lot of growth, and having an opportunity like that to self reflect helps you to grow a lot faster. I kind of wish everybody had a chance like that to kind of grow faster.
I've also had a lot of doors open for me, so I've been able to share my skills as far as speaking and going to campuses and stuff like that.
SN: Why did you want to do the documentary? Did you have any goals?
T.J.: To be honest I didn't have major goals. I didn't necessarily know how big this would be. I think primarily I did it for myself.
To be able to put this into some sort of physical visual form that I can access later. Something I can look at 10 or 20 years from now and see where I was.
At the same time, because I knew that the goal of the documentary was to offer four very different stories, I definitely felt like being an international student I had something different to share.
SN: Do you think the documentary was successful in reaching people and making them more aware of transgender issues?
T.J.: Yeah definitely, I mean from all kinds of people and all kinds of populations, I have been hearing great feedback about it.
People were recognizing me from it and talking to me about how they've been using the documentary to educate their students and staff and work on policies. So it's making huge waves already.
SN: Any advice for other people dealing with transgender issues?
T.J.: I think that for both transgender students and folks who want to learn how to be allies, it's important that people give their process and journey a lot of validity.
Take the time that they need and not let other people dictate how they're going to go about things.
To allies specifically, I would just say that there is a lot out there in terms of learning opportunities, and you just have to tap into that and not be shy about it.
Jourian is graduating in May and is an active member of the MSU community. He is also a former State News columnist. Currently, he has been working with groups to secure the visit of Samuel Lurie to MSU's campus April 6, 7 and 8 for transgender awareness training.
