In a lot of ways and for a lot of different reasons, I feel like this year has been a lot harder than most. And in the end I feel like I’ve come out more confused about what I want to do with my life than when I graduated over 2 years ago. I think next year is going to be an even bigger rollercoaster, full of all sorts of turns and hills that I can’t yet predict. I suppose it’s been a while. Here’s the gist of what’s happening lately.
Grad Apps
I spent quite a bit of time researching various grad schools and looking at all my options, but in the end came back to the ones I’ve been interested in all along. I have officially applied to three programs (Well, I still need to finish up my portfolio to send to one of them):
- MIT: Media Lab - Obviously my “Yeah, I wish” pick, but I figured I might as well try.
- NYU: Interactive Telecommunication Program - I have been looking at this program for the past few years, since I started to discover the physical computing thing.
- Art Center: Media Design Program - I’ve also been dreaming about going here, probably since high school actually. After meeting some of the faculty a few weeks ago, I feel even more inspired by the program.
I thought maybe three was too few, but I didn’t really feel a real connection to any of the other programs I was looking at, whereas these three have consistently inspired me over the years in various ways. All three of them have very different focuses, but I think they would all be great. I won’t hear back about any of them until around March though so it’s all just a big question mark right now.
Freelance
My last day at DK is going to be 2 weeks from now, December 18th. It’s really kind of weird to be leaving. Between now and when I hopefully go back to school I’m just going to try freelancing for a while.
I was looking at my old blog entry 3 years ago, when I was just signing up for the class DK was teaching at SVC, and I was so ecstatic it’s almost embarassing. But at the time I never would have imagined that I’d actually be working at DK. Or leaving it in 3 years. Even though it was a few years ago it still feels like all this happend so fast.
I guess in my original mental career path projection I imagined that I would probably work at a couple of different places and then some time later perhaps I would try to work there. And live happily ever after. Or how ever that story goes. But having skipped over quite a few steps in that process I find myself sort of struggling to figure out what happens next.
Next
And this is the point where I’m sort of unsure. I’m looking around, trying to get some freelance gigs lined up for January but I’m not entirely sure where to even look, because I’m not entirely sure what exactly I want to be doing. I obviously have some mograph experience now, but still feel like a bit of a generalist overall. I like working on all sorts of projects and I’m interested in getting back into more interactive work. I don’t have very much of that to show in my portfolio but I feel like I could do well in that space.
It’s also sort of weird with the big question mark that is grad school because it means I don’t really want to try and go full time staff only to potentially leave within a few months. So it just has to be freelance for now.
So yeah, from here I have no idea what I’ll be doing in 2010. But let’s hope it’s all for the better.