I'm 100% certain that this is a completely unoriginal thing I'm doing, but fuck it. I want to document my musings as a 25-year-old junior writer in the advertising industry retrospectively looking back at his life as a college student, for posterity. Here's what I wish I could say to myself, and maybe if it resonates with someone else in my previous current situation (well that's just unnecessary wording, Alex), then all the better. Here goes:
1) You're just starting at art school after fucking around at Community College for two years.
It's going to be like nothing you'd imagined it would be. Basically nothing can prepare you for what to expect, because nothing like it has previously existed in your academic history. It's weird. Esoteric. Eclectic. Words you'll come to use far too often to describe your creative after having just learned the difference between the two of them. It's going to be really fuckin' tough in the future. In fact, there will be a few times that you're going to question whether or not you made a foolhardy, naive decision by going to art school. It's expensive. You'll be working part-to-full time, close to minimum wage for a lot of the duration you're in college. You'll have four different jobs—some of them overlapping each other. Sleep? What the fuck is that? But hey, that's part of the process. I'm not saying it's going to be dreadfully impossible, but I'm also not saying that you'll be able to just coast the way you did in high school/junior college. But that brings me to my next point, which is a little bit less scary...
2) You're going to want to do your homework.
And I don't mean that in an imperative connotation, either. I mean it literally. Your first few classes are going to be abso-fucking-lutely fascinating. Roger will try to scare you with the work volume, but you'll grin at it. It'll excite you, because you knew that most every academic endeavor beforehand was a grind—but this one will be an adventure. You'll stay up until two or three in the morning doing homework, sometimes. One night writing 10 different sets of headline, subheadline, and tagline copy. Another night trying to figure out why the absolute fuck bezier curves are so goddamn confusing. Trust me. You'll get the hang of them because you'll make it through that confusion. Your unyielding curiosity and desire to know things will allow you to pick up the software quicker than most. You'll attribute that skill to all the puzzle-solving video games you played previously. You still attribute your quick learning to that, now.
3) There will be classes you're going to think are completely fucking stupid. But there are enough classes that will inspire you like never before.
This probably has something to do with the degree plan and the teachers along that path. BFA Advertising samples from a LOT of the departments that the school offers. You'll have to paint, and you'll be fucking miserable at it. You'll barely pass because you paint like a fuckin' third grader. That's okay. That class was full of fine-arts students specifically going to that school for painting. You'll learn and understand the color theory—that's the important part. In fact, one of your final paintings will be a Zelda mandala that you'll hang in your hallway for years to come. It's still there now.
By the way, you suck ASS at staying up to date with online classes. Pretty much skip them if you can. You failed one because you always forgot about it. That's okay. No one cares in the industry. Designing Careers will probably be the stupidest class you'll take. It's primarily meant for kids who went from high school to college with no work experience in between. The teacher will try to teach you proper business etiquette that you'll already have plenty of experience in as someone who's been in the workforce for a few years at that point in time. Ironically, you'll fall asleep in this class a bunch of times, though.
As for classes you'll love, they'll be some of the most labor-intensive classes you'll be in. But you'll learn so damn much. Again, that's the important part. In fact...
3) Don't stop learning when you leave school.
That's what'll separate you from the do-nothings who just went to art school because they had to choose college, get a job, or get kicked out. So they chose art school thinking it'd be the easiest option. Realistically, because the advertising department's curriculum is spread about so thinly across the other departments, you'll find yourself in a serious jack-of-many-trades situation. You're going to have to master them on your own. It's worth the extra time spent, because you'll be able to do things at a higher caliber than some others will. That'll separate you from the rest of the pack down the line.
4) It's going to be fucking expensive.
And I'm not talking just tuition. You're going to buy a new laptop because your old one won't be able to hang and will shit out on you. You'll need at least 16gb of RAM. You're going to buy your first DSLR, and you'll fall in love with it. But that'll lead you to bigger and more expensive lenses. A hot-shoe flash unit. A tripod. A dozen other extra parts (and still accumulating). Then, photography will lead you into video. You'll buy the video editing software you use because you like it so much. You'll use that thing throughout the rest of your career. But it's not cheap. You'll buy off-camera sound. You'll have to buy paints, markers, sketch books, course books, EVERYTHING. It'll be totally fucking nuts. But creativity is an expensive endeavor. That never changes. But everything you acquire will add to your greater successes later.
5) You're going to feel like you're doing absolutely nothing sometimes.
You're going to get senioritis REALLY early. I'm talking, like, two years before you graduate. And it's going to suck, because that whole time, you're going to dread the fact that you'll win zero awards, and you'll start to feel like just one of the other indistinguishable graduates. Just keep plugging along, kid. Because...
6) Things take forever to happen, but when they DO happen, they happen at breakneck speeds.
You won't win shit until your last semester of school. In fact, in your last semester, you'll have a teacher convince you to switch your whole game plan (he did you a favor, trust me). You'll spend nearly four and half years studying to be a designer. You'll learn how to use the Adobe Creative Suite. You'll learn how to Photoshop better than most kids your age. You'll shoot in camera RAW and have a few paying side gigs before you leave. You'll work as a graphic designer. And you'll hate it. It'll make you question your abilities. But that might be for the better.
Mark Edwards will discover you, and question why the ever living fuck you ever thought you should market yourself as a designer. Well, yeah, Mark. I mean, I've always known I was a writer. But I wanted to learn something I didn't know.
No, you're a writer. He'll tell you.
He'll convince you to rebrand yourself as a writer—which is 100% your strongest skill. You'll rework your brand identity and portfolio to reflect that. You'll win an award based on a copy-driven animation you did (four and a half years in design paid off on that), and you'll land an internship as a writer where you'll get live work put out into the world. On the day of your graduation ceremony (which won't technically be your actual graduation), you'll get a job offer as an intern at Epsilon—an agency down the street from the advertising building...as a writer. They'll hire you after the internship. And then you'll write some stupid blog to yourself before you've been out of college for a year.
7) You're going to be 100% less certain about what you want to do after getting your first job in the industry you so lusted after during your whole tenure at art school.
After learning so much, accumulating so much gear, having so many different types of clients for so many different types of projects, you're going to have absolutely no fucking idea where you want to be in ten years. At the beginning of your college career, you'd have told anyone who'd listen that you were going to become an art director at an ad agency (as if you even understood what the fuck an art director was when you were in school). But now that you're a writer at an ad agency with a fucking stupidly nonsensical portfolio full of design and video and writing...you have no fucking clue what you want to do anymore. But that's only because everything you've done has culminated into this intensely creative, jack-of-many-trades, master-of-most of them that the entire spectrum of creativity will be an option for you.
And you'll be as impatient as you were to figure it out as you were when you were in college.
But trust me, I'll figure it out. It hasn't even been a year since I graduated. It only takes a moment to make six months feel like it breezed by. Don't be so excited to grow up, kid. Things will happen, and you'll happen with them. Just be patient.