This month I packed up my over-priced New York room and headed west in a five-hour car ride. And now I’m Pittsburgh. I will miss New York City very much, and hope to return someday but for now I’m entering a graduate program at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Q: What are you studying?
A: I will working towards a Masters of Design degree in Communication Planning and Information Design. It’s this incredible program that perfectly reflects my background studying English and design: The program is dual taught through the English and design departments! How fun.
Q: How long is the program?
A: Two years!
Q: Will you still be doing freelance work?
A: Yes, but naturally I’ll be working less. In addition to being a full-time design student (we all know designers never sleep as-is) I will also be TA-ing a course.
Q: What did you do while you were in New York?
A: I found out shortly after moving there that I was accepted into CMU’s grad program so I couldn’t work full-time and so spent the six months freelancing at various companies, new clients, and old clients. Yes, I knew there was a chance that my stay in New York was only going to be temporary because I had applied to grad schools, but it was completely worth it. I got such an amazing variety of experience working for large corporations, small design studios, large agencies, and the odd start up. I don’t regret it for a second!
Q: Really? You did all that and your website still looks like this?
A: …I have hopes to update my website to reflect my new work soon, by the end of this month, actually–don’t laugh, I do! Part of me wants to re-do the whole thing, but I should probably wait until the end of grad school, right?
Q: How’s Pittsburgh?
A: So far, it’s beautiful. Classes start on August 26th so I can’t wait to dive in!