My understanding of design has been much evolved since stepping into my Design Technology classroom as a freshman in high school. I was frightened by the power tools, the saws, and everything that didn’t involve pen and paper.

Needless to say, in place of feeling the impostor syndrome acutely, I worked that much harder to try and hide it, and found that I loved design.

At the time, I was learning how to draw and make products, and this act of creation with intention changed the way I understood creativity and our consumer relationship to ‘things’. This was the beginning of my relationship with design — finding it, losing it, and finding it again.

After my first major project, I promised myself I would not embark on another design project. Call it beginner’s luck, these 2 years of dipping my feet were fun, but it was time to get ‘serious’, and take chemistry or something deemed intellectually acceptable and difficult. If I wasn’t struggling, I wasn’t learning. I made something cool, but continuing this is not ‘practical’ -- we already have mass production anyways.

[ENTER mental health: what were you thinking?]

[EXIT chemistry: off stage]

Hold on a sec, I actually like this (and I don’t care if people validate it or not). This marked a shift in my ideation and making -- I constrained myself only by my user’s actual design constraints, and not by my own self-imposed inhibitions or limitations. When I ideated, I really went ‘out there’. How was it going to be made? I have no idea, I had let go and let design.

Many tears and nights later, a year later, I made it. At the time, I took CS and Design concurrently, being told it was a total ‘cop-out’ and there was no ‘real science’. Thinking retrospectively, it was perfect.

It’s the summer of 2019, and I’ve fumbled my way through renting an apartment for the summer, getting an internship and ‘adulting’ for the first time in my life. I’m living the New York summer I’d always wanted, and I found my way into random design talks and events that I just went to for fun.

Once again, JUST KIDDING. So this ‘design’ thing is legit, and the people talking at these events have actually pursued design, as a career! Imagine that.

And then it occurred to me -- the world doesn’t need more scientists. Why should I take more classes to settle the settled? No matter how well I read or write, it won’t matter if I’m not respected or welcome in a space. It’s time to disrupt that disgusting behavior and attitude -- we need to make these spaces -- climate spaces, more accessible and better communicated. To do this, we might not have the money, but we can leverage the most untapped tool in a millenial’s arsenal: media.

Designers are T-shaped people, and now I need depth. Inherently, designers are jack-of-all-trades, but to contribute meaningfully in a medium that is easily transferable in the public/private space, I need to speak CS.

No more inhibitions, no more feeling like the impostor, no more ‘I need to do something serious and validating’. This is what I’m doing, I’m making my own space, and I’m welcoming everyone into it. Let’s begin.