"Look, no matter what you do, how hard you work, who you work for or how good you are, you will always be associated with doing a piss easy degree."
Believe it or not, this man was actually coming to my defense. Let me paint the picture. Glen is a successful stock market businessman (I'm sure they have a technical name I just don't know it) who works from home, he is also on my pub quiz team. When I found out what he did for a living, it opened the door for me to take the piss a bit, I'm sorry but it's what I do by instinct, if not anything else, it's a sign that I like you. Now Glen isn't exactly in my usual demographic for what I call a friend; he's a 52 year old, Bitter drinking Yorkshireman with a passion for stocks. What could we possibly have in common? Well, we are both regularly berated for our choice of lifestyle. He works from home so that means he must watch cricket all day, right? I'm doing a Graphic Design degree so I must just colour things in, correct?
My point is, how do we as graphic designers, illustrators, artists etc defend ourselves? Can we defend ourselves? I think it's fair to say that most people who don't study or work in the design industry don't really understand how much time, effort and commitment goes into it. I'm pretty sure most people think that we just say, "No it'd look better in green, change the font to Comic Sans" and have done with it. Can we prove ourselves to be hardworking without coming across as pretentious assholes? Why should we have to? Maybe it's just me. Maybe I care too much about public perception.
Perhaps being able to defend what you do comes with age and experience. Discuss.
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(Omg. I really am getting tired of typing my deets every time. I need to turn my blog into an OpenID account so this thing will 'remember me'. URK.)
ReplyDeleteIt's okay. I could speak the same for my degree. I mean, there are only three types of people who do psychology:
A) People who think the degree is easy
B) People who don't know what else to take
C) People who really do want to become psychologists, but only the counseling type
Those who fit in Group A have no idea what they are about to face, because psychology is effing difficult. Especially when psychologists are always trying to defend the degree of usefulness their subject has. Seriously, no matter how scientific you try to make the course, people will always, ALWAYS disregard psychology as a non-science, so stop trying to make the students' lives miserable.
That was completely relevant. *nods*
I think we should make a Rant Club.
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