Wrapping Up With Grad School
Back to reality
First, a dedication
Receiving a graduate degree is a big deal in my family. I was the first person on either side to complete an undergraduate education, making this recent acquisition an even greater cause for celebration.
Poor, but stubborn
My mom, pictured above, grew up in Spain during Franco’s regime. She completed her high school degree through night courses, working at a textile factory during the day. She came to this country at 26, just two years younger than I am now, not knowing the language. When I came into this world she had to give up her dreams of obtaining a college degree.
My yaya, also pictured above, is semi-illiterate, and grew up during and after the Spanish civil war. Our family, a mix of anarchists and communist, were harshly persecuted in fascist Spain. She broke her body in order to make sure that her four children could barely make it through high school.
Her mother, my great grandmother, lost her parents during the Spanish influenza, and lost her husband when he was tortured and killed for being an anarchist. That woman refused to smile, even on her wedding day she was scowling.
Suffering is in our blood
My dad’s side are Holocaust survivors and refugees, who before the war were rabbis and cabinet makers. My dad lost both of his parents before high school, and has had to hustle ever since. When given a choice between grueling graveyard shifts for a degree and blue collar work, he understandably chose the latter.
The effects of intergenerational trauma are so strong on that side that it’s a wonder anyone has been able to cope, however dysfunctionally.
A brighter future
My parents are some of the smartest people I know. They had to put aside their hopes for college, even though they excelled in school, and watch their peers with better support get the chance. They, along with their siblings, put their hope into our generation, to be the people who change the lives of others, rather than being the lives others change.
I inherited my artistic leanings and writing prose from my father (a beatnik poet and sax player at heart), my curiosity, strong will, and empathy from my mother, and my extremely good memory and intuition from my yaya and great grandmother (who while illiterate, could apparently tell how much a bag of rice weighed just by looking at it, and exactly how much that was worth in pork).
I am who I am because of them, and for that, I say: Gracies per tot el seu suport i els sacrificis que van haver de fer per mi. T’estimo molt.
And now for all the fun stuff
I loved being a student. My parents are autodidacts, and instilled in me a genuine love of learning. Returning to grad school, after five years in the professional world, was pretty phenomenal.
It took me two years after realizing what I wanted to do in order to arrive at this master’s program. This included cobbling together experience in various positions, community college design courses, some existential crisis after getting rejected from the roles I applied for, an extremely brief round of therapy (where she basically asked me, what are you actually waiting for?), and finally, a flurry of graduate program applications, peppered with acceptances and one rejection.
I uprooted my partner of 7 years, my cat, and all of our possessions to move to Colorado from California, in order to attend the Strategic Communication Design MA program through CMCI Studio, at CU Boulder.
Side note, I actually applied, and had gotten into CU Boulder for undergrad 10 years prior, but chose the cheaper in-state option.
This was a long time in the making.
What I learned this year
Designing is a muscle
It’s hard to keep up with what is current, what is relevant, and what is compelling. Softwares update constantly, assuring that you will never become complacent in what you know. There are endless documentaries, blogs, forums, festivals, talks, reviews, journals, sites, social media accounts, etc. that could be perused for all eternity on what is out there, and what you should know about.
I thank one of my peers (and year-long capstone project member) Dave, for assigning me documentaries and resources to read up on, in order to get used to the practice of knowing the industry. His enthusiasm about the design world has rubbed off on me, it is truly infectious.
It’s easier with your peers
On that note, I have to say that I would have never been able to succeed if my cohort wasn’t filled with genuinely lovely, talented people. As in the professional world, a great team can make anything you do shine. For our year long capstone project, I was paired with Dave and Yangmin, and couldn’t have been more lucky. We learned how to effectively communicate, research, ideate, prototype, test, and navigate all the pivots, changes, and messiness that occurs in a project together.
Designing is fun and funky
It’s a creative process, and requires you to be flexible, open, and willing to let in new ideas. This can be a stressful time, especially during week-long design sprints where time is of the essence, but also an exhilarating time, where you get to essentially revert to a 5 year old. Design is playful, sincere, and vulnerable.
Grad school in particular was a time where we could play with absolute absurdity and abstract realities. What if you could use drones to deliver food for you, on the ski lift? Yes, and then we could pay with laser beams attached to wearable devices… and so on. While this sounds ridiculous, these thought processes led to some of our more inspired and out of the box solutions.
Presenting your designs can be scary
Getting up in front of your peers and instructors (or to clients) in order to present your designs can be terrifying. Presenting your designs to users can be frustrating (why can’t you just see what I see?). It is easy to shut down and get defensive when that all comes in, even when the people giving their critiques have your best interests at heart.
Probably one of the most important things I was able to get out of this program was to accept that it will happen, and to be ready for it. Allowing yourself to receive the criticism and feedback, and then turning it into something that is compelling and improved upon, is an art.
Taking breaks is crucial
Having committed this year, and hopefully the rest of my career, to this profession can make it hard to turn off for a night. I never regretted the times that we did, and was grateful that my home could turn into a space for people to come and enjoy each others company. It made the long, grueling nights and weekends bearable, and also meant that we were more at ease with each other. Because honestly, who doesn’t love a good mustache party?
All of the sudden, a pandemic appeared
I won’t lie. Attending a design program that suddenly goes remote halfway through was not ideal. There were some aspects, like physical prototyping lab time, and the ease of collaborated in the same space, that were lost completely. We ended up being guinea pigs for fully remote design sprints, which turned out better than expected, but was challenging.
I’ve had 5 months to grieve the loss of our in-class graduate program. In those 5 months, we became super adopters of all things digital, as the rest of the world had to become. We learned to pivot our projects rapidly, leading to my capstone group project adding an entirely new angle. While simultaneously painful, heartbreaking, and debilitating, our program did what we had to do and adapted. It made us stronger.
Who I am now, versus who I was before
All things considered, I am extremely grateful. To experience a pandemic in Boulder, CO is a much different thing that to experience it in San Francisco, CA, where my partner and I were living prior to moving. As I take the first steps into a career in design, post-graduate school, Boulder has instilled in me a heightened value in mental health breaks, and enjoying what your environment has to offer.
As a designer, I have learned that I will never know everything. In order to survive, and thrive, in this industry, I will always have to stay adaptable and keep exercising that muscle. My network, comprised of this cohort, past instructors, mentors, and coworkers, will become increasingly valuable as I grow in the field. And finally, that maintaining a measure of childlike enthusiasm and imagination will serve everyone well, not just nerdy designers like us.
