I never thought tertiary level study would be this hard, even before I started doing this degree I told my self to work as hard as possible. It all started last year when I graduated high school, I knew I wanted to do product design as I’m not really a guy into numbers or programming which most of my friends are studying right now. I’ve been freehand sketching cars and tech stuff all my life, not great compared to the stuff at Core77 but adequate enough to be understood and got high grades in design classes at high school.
I read some of the sticky threads here which I find them quite inspiring but can’t find a similar situation. I did a search and was the same.
If I Knew Then What I Know (Advice to students)
Why did you choose your school?
Industrial Design Schools: Opinions and Questions
I applied to 2 schools that year (AUT and Unitec) which was the only 2 within the region (Auckland) that offers product design without me needing to move out as I fear that if I do not get employed I would have a big debt behind me after finishing the degree. I’m aware that there’s also Massey University which is regarded as one of the best within the Australasia region, but it’s all the way down at Wellington (About 700Km south of where I am) and highly competitive.
I didn’t get into the school I want to go to, so I ended up going to the other school within the region with the aim to transfer over as a 2nd year.
Progress isn’t going as planned. I’ve been getting low grades on my first semester, not only that the grades are low the studio projects themselves aren’t really up to my expectations with few exploration sketches in the process. What should I do? Here are some of my thoughts.
I find the 6 week projects quite fast paced.
I’m quite easily distracted and can spend hours of Youtube on a day where I mean’t to do work.
It’s now second semester I’m trying to learn from my mistakes and make the most out of my time here now. Here are some of the things I am doing as part of my reflection.
Do at least 1 sketch a day to keep up with sketching skills.
Commit to at least 8 hours of school work per day to stay up to date with project.
Spend time reading more about design in spare time than tech news or Facebook.
At the moment I’m considering to re-apply as a first year student at my desired school with works of my studio project from this year; at least that way the work is better than from when I just graduated from high school and maybe more leveled with more skilled high school graduates. However I will need to improve my presentations in my portfolio instead of just images of design sketches which was what I did when I applied last year.
My second option is to stay at this school and work as hard as I can until mid next year to apply for transfer as a 2nd year at my desired school.
At the end of the day I don’t really enjoy being in this school as the equipments are very old and that the school refuses to invest in the design department (Talked to the product design head there). Timetables are not always prompt, tutorials can be cancelled due to lack of attendance as students are allowed to opt out of tutorials which I find unfair to the people that want to learn and paid full amount for. All in all I felt that I been to the wrong school and also not motivated as I should to design. I’ve been to both schools in person so I know the difference.
Sometimes I feel if I should even be studying product design. I’ve considered other careers but none that interested me aside product design.
Edit: I just realized how long this post came to be, so I shortened it a bit. But thanks for taking your time to read