Final Reflection Post

I often don’t know what to say when I’m asked who I am but I realized that I can never answer it because who I am and what I do change in the blink of an eye.  As I sit here in the classroom writing this, I am a student, attending classes, meeting assignment deadlines, and interacting with fellow students.  I am a designer, I design digitally, physically, and theoretically.  I design graphics, products and anything else that interests me.  This year I have become an “Adult,” taking on the responsibilities of owning an apartment, feeding myself, paying my bills, and working a job.  I work for a company called Bongo Speakers, we make beautifully crafted bamboo bluetooth speakers.  I have been balancing my work and school all semester and have been able to handle both at the same time rather easily.  I started this year as a Strategic Design and Management major but ⅔ of the way through decided that I want to be a product designer.  I have always loved working with my hand, building things, and dreaming up inventions so I thought why not do what I enjoy in school.

 

In my first year at Parsons I expected to have the freedom to explore design literacies and find what I fit in, this however was very different than the reality of things.  I did get to try new design literacies but I rarely choose what type of design I would do for an assignment.  I started the year being assigned to draw, paint, cut linoleum blocks, write museum reviews and to take care of mealworms.  I hated the first semester because of this.  I came to parsons to be able to use all of the making resources and had to do so on my own time.  I always tried to integrate making into any project I did. The second semester was better, I had more freedom to use my skills, and build upon them in ways that I was able to choose a little more than the first semester. Through my year I saw myself always trying to make things for the projects and wanted to write about nature or traveling.

Reflecting on the second semester the biggest highlight was my elective, Makers Dozen.  In this elective I got to learn the process of making and learn about different ways to make things.  We spent three weeks in the metal shop then got to explore 3d modeling and printing, cnc machining and then had to put them all together for the final project.  I enjoyed this class because I was finally able to explore all of the making resources at Parsons.  The second highlight of the year was my Integrated Studio 2 class.  I LOVED my professor Barbara, and she inspired me to get excited about every project we did.  The projects we did were all relevant to the modern world and gave us freedom to try new things while challenging us with complex assignments.

After my first year at Parsons I am definitely inspired to keep designing even though I am not sure if I want to continue my education here.  I am pretty sure of what I want to be doing here and if the first year is anything like the rest, it’s not what I want to be doing.  I am going to try out the second year but I would be a lot more excited to just start doing what I want to do.  I came to parsons for the resources and that is most likely the reason I will be staying.

 

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