I haven't been very loyal to you, dear Raeville. I apologise, for one, the lack of posts and those of substance; two, for not even updating you with very interesting events in my life at this moment. Alot has happened, and I realised that I haven't actually said anything about it!
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Lately, I've been constantly down and out of life after school ideas - you know, the
where to after this thoughts. Questions like, what do I want to do and where do I want to go continually circle my mind. I remember the times when I used to think about these things, a year ago, two years ago, three even. And I'd be serious about it. I'd made up my mind about going to university eversince the word "
university" encrypted itself into my own vocabulary list. Three years ago, I wanted to do psychology. I wanted to know more about how humans think, and why they think it. I wanted to help people in this department, to listen to them. Come a year later, and I'm stuck in this void with many doors around me - one labelled Fine Arts (photography), another Psychology and another Arts. Although, I told myself not to get too caught up in these kind of thoughts - not then. So, I saved them up for the now. Here I am, in my final year of school and this is truly the time for me to be thinking of what I want to do. Of course, it's not the end of everything. We change, and with change, our decisions transform into different things. Today, I want to do Visual Communications. And really, it's all I'm aiming for right now. I've picked my door, and I'm going to go through it.
I'd taken many people's advice. A number of my friends have told me that I'd be great at advertising. Honestly, I can't see how I'd be great at it, but I'd always been interested in advertising and publishing. When I was younger, I used to make up a magazine. Yes, a magazine. I made a logo, layout and a handwritten copy of a magazine I called "
Halraemawan" (do
not ask about how that name came about! It was almost 10 years ago!). I even used to write scripts for sequels of movies I really really enjoyed. I did Design and Tech at school for four years, and honestly, I loved it. I didn't come up with the great innovative ideas, but there was some element behind it all that made me enjoy it very much. About three years ago, during the days when I actually
had free time, I'd look at a picture and sketch it out (I never traced). Days later, due to boredom, I'd want to colour it, and the only way I could do it, I'd thought, was to scan it into my computer and use Paintshop Pro to do it. So, I did. I took a picture of my sketch and uploaded it to my computer. I'd outline it, colour it, make a background, put a bit of shade, try different techniques in order to achieve this - once it took me 7-10 hours to complete a piece (
click here to see!). And to think that all I used was n00b drawing skills
to tha max to complete these pieces... Guh. The thing is, I want to see myself creating
that magazine's layout,
that billboard,
that album cover.
For the past few weeks, I'd been looking at what Sydney universities have to offer me in terms of advertising/publishing careers. At first, during the holidays I had made up my mind to do a
Bachelor of Arts degree, majoring in Media & Communications (also because it was too hard for me to get into the
University of Sydney's Media Comm course). Mum suggested I steer away from BA courses, because they're really for people who want to do teaching or who haven't got an idea of what they really want to do later in life. So, I made an appointment with my school's career teacher and I told her I wanted to aim for the position of an art director or something very similar, and this is what she told me: start from the production side of advertising (there's the production and the marketing side, both totally different things), and from there, work my way up to the big stuff, because starting from the production side of things, you know how things work and what things go together etc. So I asked her, what kind of degrees can I get and where?
Visual communications, she said. There is one course as such at the
University of Technology Sydney, which is quite difficult to get in this year (with a 90.25 UAI cut-off!). Then she suggested I look at the private colleges in Sydney.
I never really thought of private colleges. The idea of
university appealed to me the most, because I'd grown up believing that it's the place you want to be. It's the place every successful and great person comes from. Going to a private college seemed like a distant idea, that I wasn't really willing to take a second look at. I did, anyway. I looked at a number of private colleges, and I found one that appealed to me the most:
Billy Blue School of Graphic Arts. It's perfect. Not only do they teach you how to draw, they also teach you the business/marketing side of things - the publishing, typography, advertising side of things. Oh, and it doesn't end there. After three years, you graduate with a very sought after degree awarded by Melbourne's
University of Swinburne's Bachelor of Design (Communication Design). And no worries if you suck at drawing, because with the number of hours you spend on drawing during and outside of classes, you learn and will become good at it in no time.
However, I haven't done any Design or Art course at school for the last 2-3 years. And I don't have much to put into my portfolio (which the school wants to see in accepting you). This is my only worry. I have photographs, yes. And I have some writings, yes. Mm, some n00biliciously decent CG drawings. I still worry, though. That it won't be good enough. This school gives me the idea that it is full of innovative and super creative people, who can think of an idea in no time. Me - who am I? I can't stop but wonder, will I belong there? Another thing that worries me, is the fact that I'm not going to university. I mean,
I really want to experience uni life, but here's the thing:
what does uni have to offer me? Nothing. I haven't seen one course that has appealed to me as much as
Billy Blue in the field that I want to be in.
Ah, the future. Life after school seems so frightening.
I got back a few of my assessment tasks back in the past two weeks. Maths came back to me with a pretty decent mark of 74%, which I wasn't disappointed with, seeing that I didn't put as much effort into as I could have. My history extension project proposal came back to me without a solid mark, but a percentage band, which was absolutely gay. I want to know my actual mark so I can see where I really am on the whole. I mean, 60% could mean anything. Oh, and have I told you about my first HSC English assessment task? I think I got something like 65%, which I wasn't very happy with because I really did study hard for that. But I suppose, I just didn't try hard enough.
I hate it when that happens. You think you tried hard enough because you put in a few extra hours of study for that one assessment task. You woke up 30 minutes before usual to practice more maths questions, or you spent at least half an hour after school reading through your English notes, or you put in 10 minutes every second night learning your Japanese vocabulary - and you still get no where but half a mark for it. it's heartwrenching, and I hate it. To me then, all of that isn't good enough. It's needs to be more, and more.
Ohh, how do I balance it all?
Cheers.