The Dragon's Keep

spark of life

Well, I'm officially convinced that no matter what I end up graduating with, I absolutely want to do something that involves cars in some way or another. Maybe you all can give me some ideas to that effect.

It just seems like no matter how hard I try, I'm just a mediocre designer. Photography and writing, on the other hand, come to me naturally and I enjoy them both much more. Why I didn't choose one of THEM to major in will always bug me. To be fair, I didn't really discover my photography skills until this semester, and as for writing? I guess I was so afraid of it not being sufficient to support me in case I don't get married for awhile, and never having time to do anything else besides, or...heck, I don't know.

The only thing that I really got excited and passionate about right out of high school was cars. (Turns out that spark is still there, but I'll get to that.) When I got accepted into BYU-Idaho, I started out just taking general classes to give myself a chance to solidly decide on a major. Since I started during the winter, and am on the fall/winter track, that gave me a whole summer before I had to think about what classes to take next. Most of my best friends are guys, and pretty much all of them are car-savvy, which is how I got so into it myself. They all encouraged me to consider an automotive path, and I was totally for it. I made sure to give it considerable thought, seeing as I'm a girl wanting into a male-dominated field, and I wanted to be sure that I wasn't just doing it because all my friends were doing it, and etc. So I took another semester of required generals to stew over it. When I was sure it really was what I wanted, which was around the time to start signing up for the next winter semester, I talked to my mom about what classes I was signing up for. Hindsight is 20/20, and as much as I love my folks, I regret letting them talk me out of my dreams. Long story short, they thought that going to a private university for such a lame degree was a bad idea, and they didn't think I could cut it in a "man's job." Discouraged, I moved to the only other thing I really had thought about, which was art, and graphic design specifically.

Over the past four years, I've struggled my way through it all, not really finding the passion for it that I thought I would. I had an ephiphany today that, looking back on all my projects and whatnot, the things I really succeeded with and did my best work on had to do with cars. Go figure. My latest project is 50 little information cards, and the concept I chose is 50 must-know cars for the enthusiast and apathist alike. I'm really REALLY enjoying the process, and it's just all coming together so well. I seriously haven't gotten this much positive feedback from my peers and ESPECIALLY my professor in a long while. Probably not since my last car-related project. I obviously still have things to work on, but they are relatively little things. My concept is solid, the design is working and just needs to be refined a little more, and everyone really likes it, whether they are into cars or not, which is the entire point!

So really where I'm going with this is that maybe there's still hope for me to really find something that I enjoy doing, and that I'm successful at, so long as I get to work with cars in some way or another. And who knows? Maybe I'll get to drive some of my dream cars and meet people like Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hamilton, and James May. How cool would that be? ^_^

posted by Erin Duncan @ 5:18 PM