From Doodles and Writing to….

Writer vs. Artist

As a kid, I went through phases where I thought I would be a writer and would dedicate hours trying to craft perfect pieces of writing. Evidence of this is in one notebook or another in pages upon pages of real and made-up stories. As I would get sick of staring at words, I would go through phases where I thought I would be an artist. Evident by the contour line drawings of anything and everything I could think of. Becoming an artist was something that I had fantasized about since my first art class as a five-year old. There was something so magical about being able to create something "beautiful". I found myself bouncing between writer and artist until I went to high school. It was during high school where I decided who I wanted to be and what I wanted to do with my future (because high school me thought it was that easy). After taking a couple of fine arts classes, an art teacher recommended me to try classes in graphic design.

Starting over, well sort-of

It wasn't until I went to college that I realized graphic design wasn't exactly the right career path for me. In the same way that I shifted between drawing and doodling as a kid, I found that I needed something to offset graphic design. I fell in love with the creative process of ideas and enjoyed the collaborative sense of group work. After seeing this, a college professor suggested I take an introductory marketing class. As cliché as it sounds, marketing was everything graphic design wasn't. It was creative, but in thought and idea and where I struggled in graphic design, I succeeded in marketing. In a lot of senses, my marketing classes helped me become a better designer. On the other hand, my marketing classes would have lacked the creativity that I craved without my design side. I wasn't quite there yet though. Sure, I loved that I could combine my interests in marketing with graphic design, but I knew that I wanted to do more.

It was there all along...

All along the way, I had been participating in a new technology, Twitter. According to the Twitter archives, I've been an active member since October of 2008. While my first tweets were simple updates, I slowly began to understand the usage of hashtags as well as conversing with followers. Fast forward six years and Twitter is a necessity for anyone (and everyone) who has something to say or wants to listen to others. None of this was clear to me back then. As I began to develop in the marketing realm, I found that I had to take part in the online discussions taking place on Twitter. It was through these discussions that I landed my first interviews, internships and jobs. As I expanded into other social networks, I saw the power of social media. I loved to connect with people who had similar interests and social media is a great way to do that. Utilizing these tools became a big part of my education, as well as my last internship in my college's admissions office.

Do we ever really lose the child within us?

It's amazing how much changes as we get older, but also how much stays the same. I loved the freedom to move from writing to drawing and back again when I was a kid. Now, I enjoy being able to move from creative to business and from graphic design to marketing.I realized that I was never meant to do just one thing at a young age and although it took me a while to get back to this point, I realize that I'm still not meant to do just one thing in future career opportunities. Although this may leave a lot of questions regarding my future, one thing is for certain: I'll always have my notebook.