If you asked me four years ago what I would be doing on this day at this very moment, I would have told you that I would be taking my senior portraits in my over-sized cap and gown, degree in hand, ready to take on the advertising world with my super awesome graphic design poster making skills. Boy was I wrong about that life goal.
As I finish designs for my very last undergraduate course on the week before graduation, I am reminded just how quickly my dreams and life goals have changed in the course of the two years since I decided to drop everything I knew and switch my major to animation at the film school. I’m never really one for coming up with deep, insightful, life-changing advice, but my mind has begun racing with all of the uncertainty and hopes that new college graduates face. While most strangers spend their energy inquiring what I am going to do after graduation, I spend just as much time telling them the truth.
Like most college graduates, I have no idea what I will be doing tomorrow. What I do know is that I want to do absolutely everything…and that is the problem.
“Pantomime”, my CG animated thesis film, is complete. Now what?
Like nearly all schools offering programs in film and animation, my school tops off four years of education with a film student’s worst nightmare; the senior thesis film. We were given a year and a half to create our animated film that culminates in a big flamboyant event at our film school on a Digital Arts screening night.
Pantomime is complete. I am now the proud mother of my own 5-minute CG short film. And while I am insanely proud of my film and the fact I pushed myself so far so quickly in the two short years since I transferred in to my program, I spend very little time dwelling over and celebrating this accomplishment. For me, there is no “Undie Run”, no senior portrait session in front of Memorial Lawn, and no get together with people I haven’t seen since freshmen year. It’s only about what comes next.
When thinking about my future, I realize its not as black and white as I thought it would be four years ago. The problem that I am now facing is that I am interested in too much, so much that I don’t know what I want to do.
The comical thing is for most people, this would not be an issue. Many people look at this perspective as a blessing. “You can be so multifaceted! You can go into anything you want,” one of my closest friends proclaimed to me today.
But what does it mean to be multifaceted? How can that possibly be a good thing?
I won’t lie, I am envious of my friends that know what they want to do. Sure, they might not stick with their plan in a few years, but they at least are self-assured enough in what their interests at the moment are to pursue a particular goal. In a way, I wish I was self-assured enough to know exactly what it is that I truly want. The common belief is that by allowing yourself to be multifaceted, it will allow you to take more jobs, but it’s not fun when you don’t even know where or what to apply to.
- Some days I want to go back to working attractions at Disneyland and make magic for guests every day
- Some days I want to go back to school to become a Child Life specialist and work in a Children’s hospital
- Some days I want to work in educational children’s entertainment and animate on Disney Junior shows
- Some days I want to be a VFX artist and help make the next “Life of Pi”
- Some days I want to make flash games for the app market
- Some days I want to create medical animations for doctors to utilize
But every single day, I ask myself why I can’t be more focused with what I want.
I am aware that not knowing what you want to do is a normal thing, and that by relaying that you are open to working on virtually anything because you have so many interests in clashing fields, may be a good thing. But how do you go about communicating that when hunting for jobs and apprenticeships?
How do you portray your interests in a reel for hiring managerss when you don’t even know what you want to do in the field? When you have interests in other areas that aren’t animation or what you studied in school? More importantly, how do you plan for the unplanned future?
No college graduation post would be complete without this quote
If just four years ago I felt like I knew I wanted to work at an ad agency developing the next big ad campaign for a big name client, I am just as clueless now as I was then. It comes down to maybe I actually just love to learn; a blessing in disguise of an uncertain future.
I notice more grads are just like me, and it is exciting to not feel so alone while entering this crazy working world. While I know people will continue to ask me in the coming weeks, months, even years “What are you going to do with your life?”, I hope my answer will remain exactly the same four years from now:
I want to do it all. Teach me anything.
My amazingly talented Digital Arts Class of 2013 on our thesis screening night
Let’s do this Class of 2013, let’s learn it all.
Taking Art to the Next Level 