Photo by Brenda Chi
So last night I was invited to participate in a talk at Art Center along with a few other recent grads (
Yuhki Demers,
Elsa Chang,
Amanda Jolly,
Maximus Paulson, and
Victoria Ying).
It was a very fun event where we shared advice about what life is
like shortly after graduation. Everyone had something interesting to
contribute and even I learned a lot! Here are a few things I walked
away with:
- Everyone is scared the Monday after graduation. The unknown
future is a very daunting thing, but your peers at school will have a
much more impact on your career than you think. Their opinions of you
and your work will often get you jobs! ‘So don’t be weird.’
- A lot of people believe ‘luck’ has a lot to do with your career
path, and to a degree it does. However, luck is really the act of
preparation + opportunity. You sometimes have to go out and make your
own luck - i.e. find opportunities and go after them! You’ve hear it’s
all about being at the right place at the right time and it’s more than
true. But that also means you have to be getting out there and be
proactive about it. Sometimes that means failing, but that’s ok too.
- Try and try again. Most of the alums on the panel applied more than
once to get into an internship/training program. The key was to show
growth in your portfolio - that meant creating new pieces rather than
refining old ones.
- You must make time to do your own personal work no matter where you
are in your career. Even if you’re at a studio with a full time job,
you’re expendable and if you are let go, sometimes you won’t have
anything to show for it. Most companies keep you under a non-disclosure
agreement (NDA) which means you can’t show any of the work you did with
them and if it takes 2 years for your project to come out you have to
wait before you can show any future clients that work. So in order to
keep your portfolio updated and fresh you must find time to create your
own work.
- Travel. Open yourself to new experiences and you’ll never know how
they can inspire your work (even much later in life). Being in a place
and breathing it in is much different than using Google Images for
reference.
I hope some of those points are useful! It was a great event and I’m glad I could be a part of it!
