Friends of the blog, welcome back. Since you’re reading this, I can only assume that 1) reading my blog more often was one of your 2019 resolutions, 2) you’re a glutton for punishment by way of run-on sentences and lengthy introductions or 3) you’re really bored. Or maybe you’re new to the blog, and if so, welcome. In any case, I’m glad you’re here and ready to bear witness to my second semester of grad school.
You’re probably wondering what sort of weird virtual worlds we will build this semester, but I’ll stop you right there because we’re not doing that. Well, we might, maybe. We are currently undecided. But I’ll get to that.
This semester is a “project semester” for me at the ETC so that means I take one elective class and do one project that I basically treat like a 9 to 5 job (Aside: I gave my dad that description and he told me to report back to him on what having that kind of employment was like, so yeah. Maybe I shouldn’t have sworn golf off in 4th grade. But the number of golf balls I’ve lost in the junk on the right sides of courses around the country suggest it was good that I did though). En route to completing a Theme Park/Experience Design concentration, I’ll be taking an experience design class that will introduce me to a lot of different pieces of technology (e.g. sound, lighting, etc.) that go into building physical experiences and will also give me plenty of cool stuff to post on Instagram.
For my project, I was assigned to a team that would be developing an interactive experience celebrating Fred Rogers. Who is Fred Rogers? Sorry, I mean Mister Rogers. Yes, I get to spend a semester coming up with a cool exhibit to pay homage to an American TV icon. That’s pretty neat.
(Shameless plug: I also get to spend the semester writing the development blog for said project. So if your real 2019 resolution was to read more of my blogging, you’re in luck.)
After doing my due diligence watching Won’t You Be My Neighbor multiple times and reading articles about Mr. Rogers, I realized that this man has more wise quotes than most people have bones in their body. While my project team does not quite yet know how to attack this design challenge, I stumbled upon one quote of his that has been gnawing at me since I read it.
“The thing I remember best about successful people I’ve met all through the years is their obvious delight in what they’re doing and it seems to have very little to do with worldly success. They just love what they’re doing, and they love it in front of others.” -Fred Rogers
Before we came back to Pittsburgh, our whole ETC Class of 2020 took a field trip to the West Coast. I would say something more professional than field trip, but we did travel in yellow school buses and have to count off like kindergartners at museums after we had lunch so that is probably the most apt description of the trip I could give. We were very lucky to have the chance to visit a handful of companies in both Los Angeles and San Francisco that do incredible work in the entertainment and/or technology space(s) that many of our program’s alumni work at and that we hope to work at. Company tours and panels were great, but the real value of the trip came in one-on-one conversations I had with people at nearly every stop we visited.
No matter who I talked to or when I talked to them, each of my conversations eventually circled back to asking for advice on how to pitch myself (as a creative engineer) to prospective workplaces. In basically every conversation, people told me something to the effect of what Mr. Rogers said above: you have to do what you love and show that love to people. Whether that means posting sketches and personal projects to Instagram (or blogs *hint hint*) or going to Themed Entertainment Association events, you have to prove to people what you are and what you love by spending time doing what you love and showing it to them.
With that advice in mind from successful people who were in my shoes in the not-so-distant past and from the man in the sweater that is inspiring most of my semester’s work, I can’t not take obvious delight in what I’m doing. To do so would be counter-intuitive to the creative process, a disservice to those that gave me the advice and just kinda miserable in general. I mean, who wants to do stuff they don’t like?
So that’s what I’ll be up to this semester. Doing more stuff that I love and getting even more excited about it than before (which some of you probably thought was not possible). Since this process won’t have such clean 2 week rounds, blog posts will come who knows when and who knows why. I’m open to suggestions as to when and why, so let me know if you’re feeling creative or adventurous or have an idea or just need something to read.
I think that’s all I got for now. But who knows? Grad school is weird, man, but you gotta love it.