“You never know what you have until it’s gone”. This quote represents exactly how I feel about this semester coming to an end. It went by much faster than I had expected, and I am quite sad to know that I most likely won’t have the same professors for any one of my future classes. It’s not like high school where you most likely have classes with the same people and teachers every year. It almost feels like a shorter school year, and a transition to a different school because of how different each semester is going to be.
This semester I have learned so much about writing, college life, and even myself as a person. I don’t even know where to begin. Doing the projects for this class made me fall in love with writing even more because when you write about yourself it doesn’t just reflect who you are as a writer, but also as a person. Seeing my posts on the blog have helped me see myself from a different point of view, my “glows and grows”; my strengths and weaknesses. As much as I love to write, I never really had the chance to see myself from another perspective until Project #2.
I was used to doing much more formal essays, writing five or more paragraphs making a claim and using evidence to support it, but this particular project had a different format. When we had the ability to choose the questions and do the interviews, it threw me off at first as I had never written anything like it before, let alone an interview on myself. Knowing myself, I wanted to make it perfect. I was always a perfectionist, making sure even the smallest of mistakes were fixed. To be honest, the perfectionism caused me to grow a bit of an ego. I thought that whatever I did, it was the best and no one could say anything about it. If there was a fault in my work, I would get quite frustrated. One day though, my mother noticed my frustration and said, “You will burn yourself out trying to be perfect. You need to relax, give it your best, but don’t try to be perfect because it won’t work out. Besides, perfection is boring”. Perfection is boring. It reminded me of my favorite show, Sense8, a show that embraces originality and all things imperfect. One of the directors Lana Wachowski had said the same thing to one of the actors who was also a perfectionist: “Perfection is boring”. It allowed me to see things a bit differently, and relax. Live a little.
I began reading my classmates’ interviews and posts, and thought about about what my mother and Wachowski had said. I was inspired, which has ever happened before. I realized that we were all the same deep down, somehow connected. We all want to do something within the art and design industry, whether it is UX/UI or being a freelance designer. Everyone was putting themselves out there, stepping out of their comfort zone, and I did the same with my posts. I am in no means a social person, but as I have stated before, I express myself through my work, whether it is through design or writing. It all helped me realize that everyone at some point during their lives do something because they got inspired by someone else. From the words of Pablo Picasso, “Good artists copy. Great artists steal”. Not everyone picks that up as a college student, but they will at some point.
Another project that allowed me to see my strengths and weaknesses was Project #3, the juxtaposition project. This was a very tricky project for me, as this was even more out of my element. I’ve seen many juxtapositions in the city throughout the years, but never really paid much attention to it. I’ve known about rezoning and gentrification becoming a bit of an issue here, but it is a style of writing that I haven’t done before nor was I particularly used to. I still gave it a try because I want to try as many styles of writing as I can, as I know that in the near future I will be writing much more. I think the most difficult part for me was talking about the building I did in particular, the Dime Savings Bank. I didn’t really know much about the building, but I know it’s been under construction for quite some time now. I wasn’t familiar with the bank itself, and being as descriptive as possible with everything was something I normally do not do. It’s something I can definitely improve on, and the project in general has now made me much more aware of my surroundings. The skills needed to write this kind of project beautifully are necessary for working in many different fields, so I hope to improve on that so it can help me in the long run. Now whenever I walk around I point at every juxtaposition I can find, it’s almost like a game to me: who can find the most juxtapositions?
