Getting comfortable feeling frazzled: A personal reflection on BDW Semester 1

I learned an enormous amount in my first semester at BDW. So many valuable lessons and experiences I don’t even know where to begin. Over and over again I impress myself, and am amazed by the talent of my fellow C7 students. For the purpose of this, my first ever post on medium, and the start to my first ever blog, I am going to focus on the unexpected knowledge and skills I took from the fall semester. In an effort to keep this as focused and brief as possible, I will break this discussion down by the three core disciplines that build up the program: beginning with design, then strategy, and finishing with tech and dev.

Perhaps the biggest shock for me coming into BDW for me, was coming to the realization that I knew absolutely jack shit about visual design. Having graduated from the University of Colorado Advertising program, I was somewhat confident in my ability to design and produce an effective ad or an eye-catching visual print piece. Within 2 weeks of starting Jay Farracane’s design studio at BDW that confidence had crumbled, replaced with the realization that I knew nothing about design, only how to use of few of the tools designers use; and also a thirst to learn everything I can about design itself. I feel I struggled most with the visual design aspect of BDW in the first semester. Honestly I was frazzled and felt most of the work I produced was inadequate, or that I should have been able to do better. In retrospect I am amazed at how much I grew and took away from Jay’s crash courses and lessons. Getting the chance to step away from the hectic and demanding world of BDW for a month allowed me to do many things, including read a couple design books that have allowed me to build my design vocabulary and have a few “aha” moments that I had trouble attaining during first semester. I am excited to continue pushing myself in this area, and building my design skills and toolset moving forward.

Strategy and User-centered design were the two classes I felt I excelled most in during the Fall semester. That in itself was quite a surprise for me. I thought I was a visual designer and believed I would be most excited about learning code, but was ultimately most excited with the sketching and research and problem-solving that comes with User-centered design and strategy. I think ultimately I would like to work in a UCD related field, and am exited to developing these skills further during the rest of my time at BDW. Over the break I was able to read the book “Sketching User Experiences”, which boosted my confidence and gave me many tools I will utilize in my thought and design for the rest of my career.

The break in the action also allowed me to build substantial confidence in my ability to read, understand and write code. Front-end very quickly became my favorite class early on in the first semester, I had a lot of fun learning HTML, CSS, and Javascript and challenging myself to utilize these languages in different ways. As the semester ramped up and time became scarce, a lot of the joy was taken out of dev for me. It eventually felt like a never ending chore. Build, break, adjust, repeat,google, break, adjust etc….One particular assignment took me 4 weeks of trying various combinations of CSS and Javascript to execute an effect I had sketched out initially, only to ultimately pivot to turn in something that at least functioned. During the break, code not only became fun again, it became much easier to learn. Without the frazzling pace of 5 concurrent BDW assignments to distract me, I was able to trouble-shoot the effect I had attempted to create over 4-weeks successfully in 2 days. I couldn’t believe it myself.

Overall I am using this post to reflect on what I got out of the first semester at BDW, and its hard to nail it down, because I learned so, so much. Ignoring all the amazing hard-skills I have attained and mentioned above, besides the amazing people I have had the chance to learn from, be exposed to, and work along-side, and the inspirational and fun projects I have had the chance to build. Putting all that aside, I am amazed at how I’ve learned to work and to handle being frazzled. The pace of BDW is frightening, and overwhelming. Never once during the semester did I feel comfortable. It is hectic and hard and the expectations are high. Experiencing that has taught me a great deal about myself and who I am, and how I work best. I am continuing to figure out what it is exactly I want to do when I leave BDW, but I am more confident than ever in my ability to be of value and to perform in just about any situation or organization. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to be back at BDW for another semester of learning, building, breaking and playing.