My nails are short and dirty, and that’s how they have to stay if I ever want to make any name for myself in the industrial design program.
Like any major, success takes dedication, and there’s absolutely no time for broken nails in the workshop. Every day is the same. As soon as I arrive, it’s sleeves up and goggles on. I’ve got wood stain down my arms and acrylic paint on my favorite jeans. I’ve spent entire afternoons brainstorming concepts that still aren’t good enough. I’m in one of the most competitive majors on campus and I’ve been strung so thin this semester, I’ve had no time to really ask myself whether or not this is really what I want to pursue.
I figure I should be just about ready to pull my hair out by next week. I’ve got three projects due, along with two written finals to study for. Yet I still find piece of mind to quiet my anxious heart. I’ve spent many-a-night stretched out across overpriced Canson paper, erasing and redrawing lines I should’ve fixed weeks ago. I’ve spent most of last week measuring the radii of my Conair hairdryer. And I’ve got four more years of this ahead of me. How could anybody want this? How could I want this?
I think back to high school when I would complain to my dad about how pointless my classes seemed. What skills could possibly be taken from cranking out crossword puzzle after crossword puzzle of tenth grade vocabulary? All I learned from three years of Spanish is that I’d rather die than give an oral presentation in another language again. He said to me that no matter how irrelevant these tasks felt, they would ultimately decide if I got to where I wanted to go, and then he asked me where that place was. We both knew it was college, and we both knew it was time for me to suck it up.
Now I find myself in the same position. There’s days when throwing a tantrum in class doesn’t seem so ridiculous. I don’t want to be a painter, so why do I have to work with Sumi ink? I don’t want to render hairdryers for the rest of my life so why am I learning how to do it this semester? I’m back to feeling like this path isn’t for me.
However, last week in the workshop, I had time to finally examine those doubts that had loomed in the back of my mind for two semesters. Is this where I want to spend my next four years? And as I gazed around the workshop, I finally got my answer.
During after hours, it’s not just the lower division students like myself in there, but upperclassmen too, who are working on what I perceive to be masterpieces. While I am watching primer soak pathetically into a panel of four-dollar MDF, these students are finalizing concepts that will shape our tomorrow. And they all started where I am today. So I realized, I may not be making form studies fit for a museum, but I’ll get there.
Even with the grinding of table saws and the humming of air vents above me, I found peace. Maybe the tools weren’t silenced, but my questions about the future were. This is exactly where I’m meant to be, and all it took for me to know this was some reflection and some patience.
Haley Pearson is a freshman industrial design major and assistant opinions editor for the Daily 49er.
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