Thoughts on class:
     I've been thinking about the topic raised regarding how much time I would choose to invest in producing something "important" or "that people will be talking about 5, 20, 50 years from now." (I'm assuming that what we're ultimately going for is something that has a positive impact on the world around us, not an ridiculous PR stunt - e.g. Octomom, the boy in the balloon, Brittany Spears' wild, underwear-less behavior.)
     I believe that reward is usually gleaned from hard work, and that there aren't many things in life that come easy.  Therefore, my answer to the question would be that I would spend many years - possibly all of my life - working toward the goal of creating something that would have a positive impact on the world, in some way.  I think of the body of work created by Ansel Adams, which helped place thousands of acres of land into the National Park's Service and create a world-wide awareness of the incredible beauty and majesty of the natural world.  Or, images from Dorothea Lange's collection of Depression Era photographs that raised our collective national awareness of the suffering of so many, spring to mind.  Then, there are the documentary works of those who shed light on people, places, and ideas that are often kept in the dark, overlooked.  
     With that said, where these works took years (even lifetimes), to amass, there are also those powerful, one-click moments, which can have a deeply important effect - a chance happening, in which a photographer/videographer was in the right place, at the right time and caught a moment on film that becomes the iconic symbol for a particular event - e.g. the photo of the lone man standing in front of a row of tanks in Tiananmen Square, the horrified child whose clothes had been burned off of her body by a naplam attack on her village in Vietnam, and a 3-year-old John F. Kennedy Jr. saluting his father's casket.
     Clearly, it doesn't have to take a lifetime to create something that will have an "important," positive impact, on the world around us - even if our "world" is simply the neighbors that surround us, the polluted park down the street, the homeless man on the corner, or the clients calling your office.  Not everyone can save the world (or the whales, for that matter), but we can each make a commitment to do our best to work to make the world around us a better place.  I have to believe that performing small acts of importance, throughout your lifetime, for those with whom you come into contact, will build up to have a positive effect on the larger world.
     Each of us has our own talents and passions that could allow us to make a positive difference in the world.  I believe we owe it to ourselves, and those around us, to strengthen, hone, and utilize these skills for which we have true passion, to help drive forward causes or missions that we most care about.  For example, I'm never going to be the scientist who finds the cure for diabetes, but I can utilize my talents to create a documentary that draws attention to the need for funding to uncover the cure.  I've found that, by doing what I have a passion for, I'm personally more fulfilled and am driven to use my skills in ways in which I can make a positive impact on the world around me.
     I think about the speech teachers and law professors who drove Obama to be one of the best orators we've seen in years; or the person who swiftly created and posted the first website or Facebook page for Haiti disaster victims; or the Big Brother/Big Sister who mentors one child who grows up to become a doctor, a mayor, a good father/mother; or the game designer who created the online video game "Darfur is Dying" to raise awareness of the plight of the Darfur refugees in Sudan; or, even my own video professor in undergrad who showed me the power of documentary film.   All of these people had talents that may not ever receive recognition from the world at large, but have made a true, positive impact, nonetheless.
     It is my mission to use each day to work toward my goal of bringing the world's incredible beauty, as well as its important issues, into focus.  If my work moves a handful of people, who, in turn, move another handful of people, the ultimate reach could be positively staggering.  The term "Think globally, act locally," says it all.