End of year reflection

Looking back...

Overall, this whole year has been full of new experiences and I'm very grateful to have been placed in the CiD atelier.It enabled me to feed my curiosity and try out things out of my comfort zone, as well as allowing me to be fully experimental with my work, which I realize is a rare opportunity - especially now that we are preparing to enter the working life where our tasks would probably be slighly more monotonous.

So yeah, I'm very glad with how things turned out, although if given the opportunity to turn back time, there are a couple of things I would've done differently, such as:

(1) Graduation Project: Don't think, just do!

I wish I had managed my time more efficiently so that I could have achieved more with my project outcomes, both in terms of quality and quantity, by the time of the viva voce.

I think I sort of deflated after Open Studios which hindered my progress for awhile. During my consultation with Andreas after open studios, I showed him all the things I wanted to do and he noted how I was putting too much on my plate and that I should be prepared to compromise on a few things. I thought that by having a clear list of things I want to achieve, it would become a motivation to remain productive. Yet in hindsight, it sort of made me frozen because I was overwhelmed. Next time, I'll make sure to plan things out in a more sensible way and phase out my big goals into smaller milestones, as well as spending more time doing rather than thinking about what if things go wrong.

I also felt that the outcomes of my project were a bit rushed and I am a little disappointed that I wasn't able to give it the level of care and polishing I should have. One of the main things I want to work on is to give more thought into the branding of the project. Right now it feels like its..a bit lost in its own world, is how I could best describe it. Like I imagine people would be a bit confused on how to talk or share about it. Hopefully this is something I could work on as we prepare for Graduation show. Additionally, I want to make a website for the project as well so that it is easily accessible.

(2) Progress inertia

I wish I hadn't spent too long to get started on experimenting with the tech & materials, especially in Semester 1.

I remembered being insecure about choosing climate change as a topic because its such an oversaturated topic and spent a long time trying to find a niche in the topic. We see it everywhere, on the clothes we wear, the packaging of food we eat, on billboards and on our phones. But that goes to show how relevant and dire the situation is, its just that we are slowly getting disensitzed to it because of how the industry has twisted its narrative and made it some sort of branding trend. Only when looking at climate change through articles and news outlets that we get reminded of its ugliness. There is always some new development happening everyday, both the good and bad. Its a diverse and complicated issue, that we, as long as we are living on this planet, are inevitably bound and responsible towards.

Anyways, back to my obsession of trying to be 'niche', I think I stopped letting it bother me so much when I realized that its not really about the topic you choose, but its more about the way you choose to tackle it. I knew that there also must be a reason why I tend to gravitate towards these kinds of topics, so instead of fighting it, I'm glad I decided to embrace it to end up with where I am now.