How to find your passion as a fresh university graduate
Graduation’s done. You’re no longer a graduand. You’re now officially a graduate, adult.
You might already have a job or about to get that job offer. If you’re lucky enough, it could be your dream job. After all they say, “If you find a job you love, you’ll never have to work all your life, champ.” And If you’re daring enough, and maybe laced with bits of non-conformism, you might be tempted to start a company. The gods of capitalism smile unto you, blessed soul.
If you do not fall in any of the groups aforementioned. You could as well be as lonely as this paragraph.
But that’s not the point, I’d like to shed more light on how to find one’s true calling in life. How finding passion is not as linear as we’d want to think. And finally based on my reflections as a recent graduate.
A few years ago, a couple of friends and I started up a graphics design company. Just like most startups, we felt there was a gap that needed to be filled.
Avarc Designs was started to create designs that not only awe but also communicate in the most effective way. For a profession none of us studied in class, we didn’t start off at our best. It has certainly taken us some years before we can ably say that we’re getting there.
Being the lead designer, I’m asked several questions ranging from what design school I went to, to how long have I practiced graphics design. The passion I exhibit towards this work, one can be fooled to think this has always been my dream. Nah. I had always wanted to be a doctor. A neurosurgeon. I guess you must be thinking, “what went wrong”. Well, that’s a story for another day.
I grew up in the days where owning a television was as honourable as being born into the royal family. Even though my father could afford a television set, he still had to power it. In the early 2000s, Uganda suffered immense loadshedding and worse yet, national electrification was confined to major towns and municipalities.
Even though my home was in the government quarters in the countryside, there were no kids my age in the immediate neighbourhood.
No playmates, no one to talk to. And definitely no T.V ( alas, a kid born in this age can’t even last one day in such a environment. Lol). All my mind was left with was to wonder and dream the wildest dreams.
It’s in such solitary conditions that I started practicing art and writing story books.
In those days, a chance at gazing at a T.V set wasn’t for just your personal satisfaction, it was something bigger than that. You had to get the whole movie in memory from the opening scene to the end because the next day you had to narrate the entire story to the whole class.
In my primary three (I was 8 years old then), I profoundly fell in love with this movie; War Bus. Luckily I had had the chance of watching it twice and I knew the whole plot by heart, pixel by pixel, frame by frame. So I got a new Budget exercise book and illustrated the whole War Bus movie from beginning to end since everyone was particularly psyched up for it. At the backdrop of it, I wanted to get more time to narrate the other two movies I had watched (Titanic and Home alone).
The movie book was complete with sequential juxtaposed panels that represented different scenes just like in a comic book and matter of fact I had never seen a comic book all my life. I only got my inspiration from comic strips in the newspapers and some story books.
About two years later, the Supa Strikas comic hit the streets and all I could think about was when I would ever illustrate my own comic. In the meantime I spent most of my free hours designing words using fonts from the newspapers. I would draw words of inspiration that I would give to my family members as presents. A trade I later got to learn is called lettering.
A few years into high school, I got this amazing idea for a comic and started illustrating it day by day. FYI, there was an overwhelming demand to gain acceptance among peers then. In a school where talent meant recognition and hurrays of praise, I stood out as the least recognised person. My soccer was as terrible as my dancing. As for the rest of the sports, nothing else could be said.
This comic was indeed the perfect opportunity to re-write my life. Hiding behind my sketchbook, I drew my life the way I wished it. In the comic, I owned the space. I was the lead character and in there was a reflection of the person I always wished to be. It was such an opportunity to ‘fit in’. Every day, classmates would rally behind me to see what new scenes I had added to the story. My art wasn’t that good, I just had a compelling story to tell and that hooked everyone like Breaking Bad crystal meth.
I later got busy with school and dropped the comic book thing altogether. I also dropped studying art in order to concentrate on more ‘important’ subjects. However I kept practicing lettering mildly.
Several years later, I am at university and by an unusual hand of sleight, I get the opportunity to study graphics design. I remember attending my first graphics design class and only one thing running in my mind, “I wish I had known about graphics design earlier.” Not that I was restricted in any way from practicing art at the moment. Not at all. However for a student pursuing a Civil Engineering degree, it’d be unheard of to ditch engineering for a lowly respected profession like art. Artists are broke, and hungry.
You should have seen the look on everyone’s face when I told them I was pursuing an Engineering degree. It was a mixture of awe and envy. At my university, no one really gave a damn about how talented you were. It was always about what course one was doing.
There I stood, having earned morsels of respect and envy of peers. But yet something, still, drew me to art. A profession where I would be scorned as I toiled away in oblivion. As if that burden wasn’t enough, I still had to face my dad and tell him that I’d be pursuing something else other than engineering. An abomination.
Just as my friend Daniel put it,
“To this date, it is hard to explain to an African parent what a startup really is and what it does without sounding like a loss to the clan. I mean why would someone buck away the prestige and assurance of being a lawyer or doctor, in favor of tussling it out in a field dominated by cozy white people who don’t feel a historical responsibility of pulling their entire family into a new level of economic security?”
You see, kids in Uganda are raised with the perception that if you want to make it in life, you must work hard at your academics (even through cheating exams) and get a good course and subsequently get rewarded with a money dripping job. So no parent can understand why one would leave such a respectable profession for something else less than that. It’s totally unheard of.
In fact I personally tried to fathom how I could have had interest in art and rather not in engineering that gives better financial security. Besides I spent a whole damn four years of hard work trying to earn that degree. The fact that i’d have the guts to drop engineering for anything else is bewildering.
Subject to that internal argument, I’ve SINCE come to a conclusion that, “apples don’t fall far from the tree”. Possibly an overstretched use of quote, but wait a minute. Here’s my explanation.
Much as we want to believe that humans have the freedom to make their choices, there are some things that choose us. Have you ever wondered why you like color red or blue? (well, apart from the political connotations that create disdain to particular colours). No one influenced you to but you just found out that it was your favorite colour. Some things are innate and no matter how we may try to run away from them, we only find ourselves running in circles. And that has a lot to do with our passions or desires. Personally I decided to embrace mine.
I’ve summarized that story to make the blog a short read but in context, it wasn’t easy for me to find my way. I tried everything; building electronics, stage acting, music (singing, dancing, playing instruments, writing), sports (soccer, rugby, hockey, volleyball, chess, badminton, basketball), with hope that I’d find myself in one of those. Nothing. It was frustrating to keep learning that I’d never be good enough. Somehow art stood out.
However from my story, you can see that under self indulgence, I’ve drawn more than I’ve done arithmetic. As far as I can recall, it’s always been about how to create better ‘looking’ things. My heart beats for design. Friends who know me well, know how much it breaks my heart looking at poor design. When I see a building, am thinking about how to make the aesthetics better, rather the structural integrity. Contrary to what a Civil Engineer should see in a structure. It’s that innate skill that helps me make savvy designs.
“Sometimes life hands you an opportunity to do better, to be better, to correct your course, to carve another path. It’s like hitting the reset button on life.” — Lecrae.
It’s distinctly clear that this is where am supposed to be headed. I can take up the opportunity and live ‘my dream’ or just like anyone else follow after ‘the dream’. One could wonder why I didn’t do art professionally all the while. In fact I didn’t study art past my senior two because it didn’t look financially fulfilling. No one had ever shown me a successful artist to whom I could relate or draw inspiration. All I saw were guys muddied by bouts of paint all over their hands and overalls. They seemed to be living everyday as a miracle. Here we are.
So just like you, there’s this fear too, “why leave a ‘stable paycheck’ to a ‘sink or swim’ lifestyle? What if I don’t make it?”
And that’s where everything goes back to square one. This paranoia just shadows all the self belief like an optimism sucking goblin. You probably have a hundred reasons why you can’t make it.
But that shouldn’t be the case.
I believe our deepest satisfaction at a job or work is when we do something we are passionate about. There’s nothing awesome as doing work you feel God created you to do. Your uniqueness creates value for you and adds a midas touch to that every work you do. It’s like everything you touch goes platinum.
Disclaimer: No one said the journey will be smooth. You might not make it in a year or worse five. But you wake up every morning with that Clark Kent vibe because you know you are just about to save the world no matter what.
However, be not fooled that all will be merry so that you can chillax whenever you feel like. Nah. An aleatory, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants decision is never going to be a recipe for success. This calls for thorough prior planning and extremely a lot of hard work and commitment. It takes a lot of hard work to get even or better. In fact on first encounter it looks not only abstruse but impossible. You wonder if you’ll ever do it as well as they do it. This is the stage at which most people give up. However if you put the long hours in, do it for long enough, you’ll definitely find your unique style that brings something fresh to the table. It’s then that you get inexpendable. Hard work — I repeat HARD WORK — gets you there.
Part of the hard work entails reading voraciously and catching up with what others have done. Personally I read a lot about other people’s art, rummage Instagram, Behance, Pinterest and Google for design inspiration, practice lettering every time my pen lands on a piece of paper, watch tutorials and definitely watch a lot of movies. (Lol. Don’t do the movies if you want to be a doctor. FYI; there’s a minefield of design inspiration in the movies from logos to t-shirts).
You don’t have to necessarily be very talented about it to do it (I’ll probably share about that in another blog). You just have to be passionate enough to keep going even when things don’t add up. Remember, hard work beats talent when talent fails to work hard.
For some people it’s not that easy. Not all of us were born with the ability to start up something on our own. Find like minded people you can partner with that can propel you to achieving your dreams. (Remember the Steve and Woz combination that created Apple Inc.)
“Nothing matters more than knowing God’s purposes for your life, and nothing can compensate for not knowing them — not success, wealth, fame, or pleasure. Without a purpose, life is motion without meaning, activity without direction, and events without reason. Without a purpose, life is trivial, petty, and pointless.”
— Ps. Rick Warren. ~Purpose-Driven Life.
Thousands of people spend their lifetime trying to find work they are passionate about and yet it was right in front of their faces all along. Just that they chose to dress it down or rather ignore it because it didn’t look financially fulfilling. They subsequently die with regret, feeling they didn’t live their lives to the fullest potential. Don’t make the numbers. It doesn’t take rocket science to discover what you are passionate about. Like I said, “apples don’t fall far from the tree.”
What are those skills you keep doing even when you try to avoid them? Do you feel the deepest satisfaction when you practice them? Boom…there you’ve found your passion. Or your fear is that they are not financially fulfilling. The choice is entirely up to you to follow your heart or follow the money. And there is always a way to get both. It’s your call.
To all the fresh graduates, congratulations.
Shalom.
