It’s official…it’s almost winter break! It’s almost that time of year when college students are a bunch of walking zombies, cramming in last minute late night studying, staying up late doing final projects and papers, and eating as much sweets and coffee as one can to stay up. I would be lying if I said that didn’t describe me because it does to a T. Anyways, as the semester is coming to a close students and professor begin to reflect on the 15 weeks of all the good, the bad, and the ugly.
If I were to leave this class learning anything, it would be to limit distractions while I do any work for school or my career and try to incorporate deep work into my life in order to create my best artwork as I possibly can. Cal Newport stated in his book Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, that if you have less hours to get things done, use those hours more wisely. I have always struggled doing this throughout my life because I believe I won’t have enough time to do what needs to get done so nothing gets accomplished. When instead I should be doing something, whether it accomplishes half, less than half, it doesn’t matter as long as something gets done. Any time we can do even a tiny bit of it, will save us in the long run when we have to complete it along with a million other things that have now piled up. As a final project, we had to do a white paper that is very important in businesses. I have actually never heard about it until this class. I had my white paper be about how to avoid all of the distractions while working in the animation studios and implementing deep work. For my dream career, I want to be a visual development artist or animator for Disney. By going through this assignment, I have really taken the information to heart in that the work that I will hopefully be doing is rigorous at times and I have to be 1,000% focused at all times. It also taught me how deal with workplace distractions in different ways that I will most likely use outside of the workplace.
Joe Edelman states in his article, “How to Design Social Systems (Without Causing Depression and War)”, that “People need space to make mistakes.” In today’s society whenever someone makes a mistake in class or out in the world, people make fun of them, laugh at them, talk down to them for getting it wrong, and so much more. As a shy person and a perfectionist myself it doesn’t get any easier. I know that it’s okay to make mistakes and I want to make them in order to grow and learn especially in the graphic design field. I want to make mistakes that make the design or project better, but I get to stressed if it’s not “perfect or right” or like everyone else’s’.
As for now I’m going to be a walking zombie, shoving in junk food and studying for my last final until it’s over with and I can recharge over break!
Michaela Ganezer 