No More Pencils, No More Books

I wish I had better mentors throughout the years. It's like I fell into some gaping black hole as far as education is concerned and nobody was interested in supporting me in what I wanted to do. The majority of college involved more penis-waving than guidance, support, or inspiration. It's a shame. I had one exceptional professor my freshman year who taught me how to take constructive criticism on my writing. He also told me not to turn into an alcoholic like him and wake up on a floor in time for graduation, wondering what the hell happened to the last four years. I took his advice on criticism, but elected to cruise his well-worn path to inebriation and facial rug burn.

Meanwhile, I had a journalism professor calling me the "photographer with a writing problem" and a photography professor telling me I should have enrolled "up the hill" -- alluding to the School of Fine Arts, as opposed to my chosen College of Communication (COM, or "College of Optional Math"). He thought I'd be better off with the black berets. Apparently my creative renderings of car accidents in response to his spot news assignments threatened his journalistic sensibilities. Nobody wanted me. I would have changed majors and gone up the hill to the art school to play with large format cameras, emulsion transfers and the like, but I was urged to be "practical" and focus on a marketable skill. So marketable is my photojournalism degree, in fact, that it climaxes with the previous post featuring snapshots of iguanas sunning themselves. Welcome to my $80,000 blog.

I applied early admission to my first choice college, Emerson, where I was going to major in creative writing. I was accepted to the honors program and was all but packing my bags when I was strong-armed into dropping my creative fantasies and accepting the more Practical road of journalism. I don't regret much in my life, but I struggle not to become bitter about that decision. In the end I would probably have landed right where I am now, discovering my passion and what I'm really good at (that is also marketable). I just would have saved a decade of strife.

Last week the instructor was going through the "requirements" of the course -- the intangibles, like rabid curiosity and the need to fastidiously arrange items on your coffee table. He talked about the necessity of "attention to detail," not in the flaccid overused criteria of job descriptions, but in reality -- examining your design right down to the individual pixel. Some of the students laughed at this perceived exaggeration, but I still had a crick in my neck from staring at lines of code all night attempting to fix the border of my #alpha-inner that was pushing the black line one pixel to the right of the top margin. That class felt like coming home to the mothership. I belonged there. It was an odd and thrilling sensation.

After the class, I thought angrily of a conversation I had junior year with my Design professor. I told him excitedly of my past endeavors with zine compilations, collecting writing and artwork and spending nights at Kinko's with a glue stick, xeroxing little books to distribute at coffee shops. I told him of my love of desktop publishing. He knitted his eyebrows together and asked with a snort, "What are you going to do with that in the real world?" My heart sank. I was sure there was something I could translate that desire into. He could have said a million other things to support me, including, "Hey -- there's this new thing starting called the World Wide Web -- I bet you could design sites." Today it's a logical jump for me to make -- the sites I've designed are the essence of digital zines. Why was that so difficult for him to see? Why was he so preoccupied with appearing Holier Than Thou from his sleek graphic designer throne? I ended my junior year with the realization that I should abandon hope for a future filled with creativity, color, or god forbid -- fiction.

The first day of Communication 101, the dean showed his infamous video of a newscast to the entire freshman class -- 400 of us. A reporter was interviewing a woman whose son had been decapitated by a freight train moments before. She was in hysterics, and the reporter was ramming a microphone down her throat. "How many of you in this room would interview this woman right now?" he asked us. Three or four students raised their hands (they probably work at Clear Channel now). He said, "The rest of you can leave. You'll never be journalists."

I've got a laundry list of examples like these. I don't understand these cocksure white males and their bloated egos. I won't even go into my Literature professors. Professing nothing but their entitlement and superiority to a roomful of impressionable, hopeful kids. What a waste of four credits.

These days, if I detect the presence of a naysayer in my life, I snuff them out instantly. I cannot be surrounded by people who are afraid to dream big, or who think that happiness and success is something that happens to you -- if you're lucky. I know I create my own experience in this world, and I intend to create a great one. I won't work in a windowless corporate office wearing sensible shoes forever. There is not a reason in the world I cannot do exactly what I plan to do -- get show-stoppingly awesome at multimedia development, buy a bungalow on the beach on Alki, adopt an Australian shepherd to play Frisbee with, and work only during the rainy season. No boss, no dress code, no 9-5. Only one name on the business card: mine. I have the ability to make that life a reality, and I intend to. So when my new instructor said on Thursday that he was running his own design business before he even finished taking the program (which he now teaches), I knew I was in good hands.

I am the obsessive geek reading SEO books way past bedtime, or digging through my templates in search of that errant pixel. I get embarrassingly excited about stylesheets. I have images begging for music. I am hungry to master PHP understand MySQL. I want to learn the skills I need to make the pictures in my head visible to the naked eye. I can do this. I might even be good at it.

In short order, I will have sand between my toes and a Frisbee in my hand. I'll save you a seat on the beach.