One year ago I came across the difficulty of choosing where I want to be in the next four years. I chose New York as the cultural capital of the World. A city where millions of people come each year to find themselves.
As most students at The New School, I came to New York to study fashion and discover what am I interested in. And here am I am Ukrainian student in New York studying strategic design and business administration at Parsons School of Design. I always knew that I wanted to study business, but business is such a broad word it can go into any direction and this is what I hope I will decide, understand and conquer in the next three years at Parsons.
I would say that all the courses I took during my freshmen years very different. I took quantitative reasoning – where I learned statistics and how to use excel. I took sustainable systems, where I learned about global issues and the ways I can incorporate sustainability in y further works and designs. This is the class which the most cross themes with other classes. As the problem of sustainability in grows, being the second most environmental dangerous industry the topic is widely discussed. The topic of fast fashion was raised multiple time in Integrative studio II and the final projects were in a way related to sustainability. The final project was to create a garment which reflected an issue. The material which we used were all eco-friendly and sustainable. The classes which I thought would be similar were Integrative seminar and studio I & II, but they turned out to be completely different. During first semester seminar and studio, the incline was to memory. The writing was more individual based rather than reading based.
The skills which I obtained during the first year though out all my courses were the uses of the adobe programs. I started with zero knowledge of how to use all these useful tools, now at the end of the first year I look back and see that I am almost proficient in most of the programs. I feel as if this Is one of the most useful things I have learned. Most of my projects were based on the use of illustrator, Photoshop or premiere, which gave me a lot of experience. It is so frustrating to sit down in front of the computer screen for hours trying to understand how it works, but once you learn It becomes a tool, which you can’t imagine working without. Especially for us as students living in the technological era, it is crucial to understand and to be proficient with these devices.
Looking back, I understand that the group projects were the most exciting ones. I am a person, which would always prefer to work on my own then in groups, due to time-frames, communication errors etc. In each class, I had at least one project which included a group project and the outcomes are impressive. two heads are better than one and the people that you work with later in most times become your friends. Group work also gives the opportunity to see different perspectives and other world views.
As a Parsons first year student, I had to take required courses. I believe the two course which I would choose as my highlights were the two most difficult classes for me. The first one was the Time: Frame class and second was Drawing and Imaging.
During my first class of Drawing and Imaging, the first thing which I told my professor was: “I don’t draw. I am a business major” I felt as if I was in the wrong place, most of my classmates were proficient in drawing and I had no clue what I was doing. This was the course which I spent the most time on, I would spend the nights at the University Center doing assignments, which weren’t that complicated compared to what was coming. The project which feared me the most was the final project which the professor would talk a lot about. Most insecure I felt after the seeing the works of last semester students. As the semester was flying by it was already March and time when we started to work on our final projects. The theme of the project was: Islamic Culture. We spent a class at the Metropolitan Museum of Art getting inspiration and drawing sketches of possible ideas. This is when I understood what I will be doing. When we left the museum I went straight to Blick Art Materials to buy everything I needed to get started, since I was full of inspiration. I started with my drawing from my sketchbook, which I transferred to Adobe Illustrator, created five color studies, which were different variation of the same design and after the critique of the studies I started to transfer the design on to canvas and color mixing, which took me a little more than two weeks. The color scheme was chosen due to the controversy, I thought that it was an interesting combination of making an Islamic print in neon colors, colors in which you would never find these patterns. It overall took me six weeks to create the painting, which I am really proud of. If I was to saw this painting four months ago I would never believe that It was made by me.
The second project which I am proud of is my Time: Frame final. The final project was to create a video. We didn’t have a theme, we only had guidelines, specific quality of the video and the length. When you don’t have a specific topic it always more complicated since there is so much to choose from. I decided to create a cooking video. The final result was completely different from the ideas which I started from. Overall I spent over 150 hours on editing a three-minute video. Of course, it was so time-consuming, since I again had no idea of what I was doing. This was my first time using Adobe Premiere and creating a video. This course taught me how not only the skills of using adobe but also how to film using a professional videocamera, how to record professional sound, professional lighting for video recording and of course editing. The video which I made wasn’t a cooking video, which we are used to see on Youtube it is more about the beauty of cooking and the sounds that it incorporates. After watching my video if you didn’t know how to bake pancakes, you will still have no clue, but watching it gives aesthetic pleasure.
Ahead of me are three years at Parsons, three most important and responsible years. This is the time I have to understand what I want to do in my life and where I want to go. Looking back and seeing my progress during my first year I am very intrigued to see who will I become by 2020. My goal is to find myself and to have a clear image of what I will be doing after graduation.
