Adversity and hardship are consistent factors in daily living. What truly makes someone stand out is the ability to face and overcome said hardship. The start of my journey through adversity and hardships helped to refine my perseverance and ability to face challenges head-on. Starting with the experience on a CIF-Southern Section Open Division high school basketball team. In sophomore year I had been chosen out of the 10 other JV players. The head coaches decided to move me up from Junior Varsity to Varsity due to my focus, leadership, and work ethic within the team.
The bump-up was a challenging transition seeing that I didn’t have the speed and struggled to keep up with the faster pace of the games. Most of the time, I wasn’t the first pick to get into the game. When I performed in practice and got the opportunity to play, what I did provide was heart, consistency, and perseverance despite facing challenges and setbacks such as injuries and the ability to keep up.
Even though I didn’t play much, I showed up every day to practice and gave it my all to be the best teammate. From the bench, I made sure to be the loudest on the bench and communicate with players to provide insight or observations from off-court.
These experiences on that team helped to refine and shape my ability to perform academically and professionally. The first challenge that I faced head-on was moving to Rochester, New York from Los Angeles, California to learn from one of the top graphic design programs. Now, the adversities center around time management and the ability to work under tighter deadlines while providing high-quality work. It has been a positive challenge to balance both rigorous academics and working two jobs.
Through the rigorous graphic design program, I have been learning the different aspects of design and how to effectively communicate through them. Not only am I gaining skills in the different aspects of design, but I am also gaining skills in Adobe Suite, Figma, macOS, and other applications.
Within the program, I have also had the ability to gain experience in solving real-world problems through experiences like EUREKA!, a 48-hour interdisciplinary multi-level design workshop. This workshop selected me and 34 other students to participate and help Friends of the Washington Grove, a non-profit organization, with different aspects in which they were struggling. My team had been selected to help find a solution to help Curate the Forest. In other words, we searched for a solution to help visitors to understand the connection between them and the Washington Grove.
In a short time, I have gained a wide variety of hands-on experiences in various fields. From helping out a local church with seasonal card designs to working with a start-up tea company, designing wedding invitations, and on-campus jobs working as both a Social Media Manager for Student Affairs and a Student Designer for the College of Engineering Technology.
Each shaped me to be a designer that is constantly learning and looking to learn. If it hadn’t been for the opportunity to work with the tea start-up I wouldn’t have realized the importance of understanding how business and design can build off one another. As the sole marketing/creative of the team; I learned to juggle content creation, and advertising, and help build their website in three months.
As Social Media Coordinator turned Social Media Manager, I have had the opportunities to work with quick content creation, analytics, content planning, and working with a diverse audience and team members. I have also had the opportunity to experience working in a smaller design team as one of the two student designers for the College of Engineering Technology. In that position, I learned how to work with the other designer to delegate different projects with tight deadlines.
I have been invited by one of my professors to join an in-house graphic design studio on campus, called Command G. Through Command G, I have the opportunity to work on real design problems and talk directly with clients. While these experiences have been challenging, they have helped shape me into a designer who embraces adversity instead of running from it and takes challenges head-on knowing I’m equipped with the tools to tackle them.