What themes and working methods emerge in several courses?

By looking back, I have already learned many courses and project in Parsons since now. So it may be a right time to do a summary of my Parsons studies. The things that I have learned the most since I come to Parsons is about the sustainability. This is really a theme that I have never get in touch with and really take time to think about before. This is a theme that has been gone through for several times thought my first time to now. We take the sustainable system class in the first year. We did lots of research, reading an essay for this theme.Then many of our core studio classes also did lots of projects that related to this topic. For example, I created a system to deal with the excessive consumption problem in my Design Studio two. However, even though we work with the sustainable theme through every semester but it still becomes more and more different to me now. At the beginning, I just passive acceptance what we learn from the class about this topic until now I start to consider about the sustainable development while I doing every project I think I may be the big change and different I have.

Besides, whatever the class that I have taken in Parsons, the teachers are always training us to have a critical thinking by not only for my own works but also others. We will have a critic for everybody’s work so that we can get many good ideas that we have never think before and therefore help us to improve next time.

What skills did you learn in one course that you utilized in another?

I have taken many different classes in Parsons that involved in the different field of study. Even though they seem really different, they still have many connections between each other and the study of one area will also help others. For example, the Time class that I have taken in the first year. We have learned lots of computer tools and they actually really help for my design class. Because we always do lots of layout and computer drawing. By gaining those company skills really help me a lot for my later studies.

What connections do you see between your academic studies and studio making or even projects outside of school?

I always believe that everything that I have learned or did will help each other to different degrees. Even though you may not figure out how they may work for each other. But they will subconsciously exist in your mind and will use them someday. For example, we take the fashion history in the second year, and later on, we have many projects that related to those fashion history. Such as we did the Balenciaga project, we did lots of research on Balenciaga and therefore by gaining some basic knowledge about him will help me to do my project better and guide me figure out what direction that I want to go and did some specific research about the direction that I want to focus. The same with the project that I did outside the school. Everything that I did is actually gaining experience for me. I learn the mistake from every project that I did and gain the knowledge by doing research every time.

What made some projects/ papers more exciting? What did you enjoy most about these?

I think the most exciting part of doing every project is the process of facing the difficulties and then found a way to figure out. You will gain the sense of achievement when you solve a problem on your own and I really enjoy the process. Because you may feel very confused and in order to deal this problem you will do lots of testing and research and then find the best way to the end. However, there is much happy accident that happened when you are doing the testing, which is another thing that makes me very excited about.