Seminar was a really good introduction to Parsons. I transferred in from a liberal arts college so I have already gone through an intensive first year reading and writing seminar and then I was a teacher’s assistant for the next year’s first year course. So, I have been exposed to a lot of different texts for the classroom discussion setting. However, this course felt fresh and each of the readings were varied and unique. They introduced a lot of different and diverse perspectives and styles that I hadn’t yet come across in my academic career. Discussion was equally diverse, with so many people’s unique perspectives filtering the lenses through which we are discussing these texts. This, I think, is at the heart of the Parsons experience. This is how we start to see, as visual artists and designers, new approaches and, in turn, develop valuable new creations.
The work I was doing in Seminar has been crucial to the development of my Studio works. At first, this was not necessarily the case, but as the courses continued, i started to integrate them more. Especially in the last project, in which I am painting my own version of the Narcissus story, my writing and visual work contributed to each other pretty equally. I wrote my version of the myth before starting the final painting, but I sketched the base idea for the painting before I began writing my version of the myth. Neither the visual piece nor the written piece would be nearly at the level that they are if these components had not informed one another.
