Graduating as a Designer During a Pandemic
As part of the final year at York University/Sheridan College Design (YSDN), students are given the opportunity to present their work through a graduating showcase. For many people, such as myself, this is something many of us looked forward to — even during our prospective years when we were applying to post-secondary programs. But little did my friends and I know that we’d be graduating in the midst of a pandemic.
Starting from the beginning of the semester in September 2019, graduating students were required to put in a minimum of 50 hours towards the show by joining various teams such as branding, social media, web, or content. Students voted on which branding route to proceed with, and we began to create content to promote the show through our respective design teams. With the guidance of professors who collaboratively worked with the executive student team, we booked a venue in Toronto for the YSDN 2020 grad show with the final date being April 13, 2020. We all continued to work on the show and make it as perfect as it could be…that is until it got canceled.
Three months into our final semester brought us to December 2019, where the majority of the world first found out about COVID-19. If you had asked any of us if COVID-19 would result in our graduation show and all our final classes to move to a remote environment, no one would have predicted it. I mean, even if you asked us in March of 2020, we assumed we’d be back to smooth sailing within a few weeks.
But all that changed on Friday, March 13th.
I vividly remember sitting around a table in my Design Workshop class at Sheridan College where we were sent home after finding out that all our classes were moving remotely for the time being. Through it all, we still had hopes that this whole virus situation would be over within the next couple of weeks especially since Canada didn’t have many cases. However, the tables definitely turned on us there. Within the next couple of days, Canada ended up going into a lockdown, and on March 17th we announced that our physical grad show was canceled due to social distancing restrictions.
I’m positive that most art and design students would agree that graduation shows are an excellent way for students to network with job recruiters and members of the community. It’s also a great way to wrap up and celebrate the accomplishments of the graduating class. However, given the situation, we ended up launching our graduation solely through a digital platform. This added more pressure on the web team — which I had the opportunity to be a part of. Truth be told, this shift was rather tough for most of us given the lack of motivation we had to finish our final classes or wrap up our thesis, all while working towards launching a never-been-done-before virtual grad show.
Naturally, most of us felt it was incredibly bizarre to be the only graduating year of the program with a virtual grad show, and that’s when our thoughts of uncertainty really began.
Will prospective employers bother visiting our website the same way they would have visited the physical show? Will the website crash when we launch? Are there even jobs available due to the COVID-19 outbreak? Is there even a point in putting effort towards the “grad show”, or in my final classes? We’ll still have our actual convocation in June though, right? (spoiler alert: our convocation got canceled too and our degrees were sent in the mail along with a graduation cap and some confetti).
These were questions we’d constantly ask amongst one another as we dealt with such unexpected circumstances.
And here we are, nearly eleven months later and the pandemic has only gotten worse. Parts of Ontario, the province I currently reside in, is back into lockdown as we go through our second wave of COVID-19. My own experience of uncertainty came with my attempts of finding a job as a junior product designer shortly after we launched the virtual grad show. Despite the pandemic bringing in new opportunities for startups working on remote based products, it still came with several complications within the design industry — the loss of clients, lack of available jobs, and layoffs, just to name a few. Most internships were also canceled or pushed to a later season, which truly meant there was a limited amount of jobs available for new graduates. Not only that, but there were likely thousands of other design graduates from similar programs that were in the same boat.
Unfortunately, plenty of “junior” level jobs that were available somehow required 3–5 years of experience, which was an impossible demand for most of us. Many of us were also left with no responses — even for jobs with complicated and lengthy application processes. For the duration of a little over a month in the summer, I recall doing around six phone calls and interviews for a Toronto based tech company that even involved a lengthy and exhausting unpaid design challenge. After reaching the final stage of the hiring process, I felt hopeful for the first time since March, only to find out they were unable to hire a new graduate in a remote environment right now. That meant, even if we were qualified for an available position, most job recruiters chose applicants with more years of experience over new graduates, especially for remote work. At this point, there was little to no motivation left in me, and I stopped applying to design jobs while continuing to work my retail job to stay afloat.
Fast-forward to September, where all that changed, and Sara Stewart, CEO of Clade Design reached out to me in an email to chat about an open junior designer position. I recall her mentioning that she found me through the YSDN 2020 website, which eased my feelings of uncertainty. If I’m being quite honest, their interview process was super smooth and humanizing which took me by surprise; a direct contrast to how other companies I applied to handled their hiring process.
The design challenge was only two hours (and it was paid!), which was unheard of to me as most other companies would involve multiple hours or if not days of unpaid work. It almost felt too good to be true, but I’m super grateful they ended up offering me a job as a remote Junior Product Designer at a place that truly values a balance between life and work.
Needless to say, graduating during a pandemic was definitely something no one was expecting, and the job hunt was a daunting experience for most of us. But if there’s one thing I took from it all, it’s to be patient with yourself as well as the whole process and to not compare to others. As cliché as it sounds, things eventually do get better through supporting one another and taking care of yourself. If you’d like to view the showcase, be sure to visit ysdn2020.com as well as rgd.ca for a collection of virtual grad shows across Canada!
