thoughts on the whole wide semester.

how much i've changed in one semester! i'm inclined to say "we," for all of my classmates too, but i'm hardly qualified to speak for all of them. but. how different my working methods are, my work ethic, my drive, my fear of failure. which is to say, i have those, in spades, in a way i have never experienced quite so potently before. i suppose it comes down to this: all throughout education until this year, the year i have begun my major, it has been possible (inadvisable, but possible) to be somewhat dismissive. "this doesn't have anything to do with the rest of my life." "this doesn't even matter." "i'm never going to have to deal with this stuff again." all that dried up this august.

finally? this is it. this really is. what i've been waiting for. no more waiting around for things to be important and pertinent. i have done some amazing learning throughout my life, and i am very thankful for it, but no matter how passionate i thought i was about it, i see now that there was always a level of removal, a skepticism about what difference it all makes. the bridge from my day-to-day to the real world was simply too long and too misty to conceive.

but now? now i can see. exactly what it's going to look like, to navigate through kcai and merge onto the motorway of the rest of my life. graphic design is important not simply because it is teaching me life lessons about listening to authority, and critical thinking skills to analyze literature, which are significant lessons and important skills, but because i will be applying the knowledge i'm gathering right this instant to a job within the next few years, and quite possibly from here on out. no lag, no delay, no removal. this equals that.

the blindfolded, trust-based processes were unfamiliar, but they have been sinking in, proving how much better a final product can be if each step is treated as its own final project, and absolutely no corners are cut. the emphasis on perfection of craft, hitherto unfamiliar, has turned me rapidly into a perfectionist, let loose the meticulous tendencies i must've always had tucked away somewhere.

i've really experienced the importance of analog methods, both as initial jump-starting techniques and also as very intentional aesthetic decisions, achieving imagery that would otherwise be totally unattainable or otherwise laughably false.

the work ethic that says to my body, "it's okay, we'll sleep later, i promise," and then gets me out of warm bed to go to studio because that is where i need to be to get my work done as i would like it to be done.

these things are simple and early and basic, but i am certain that they are pouring the graphic design concrete underneath the designer that i will be striving over the next few years to graduate as, and that, then, will be the foundation for the designer i will be spending the rest of my life striving to become.