ACCD: an excercise in love/hate relationships

If you're reading this blog there's a good chance you're aware I attend Art Center College of Design. The school is not quite you're typical college. It offers bachelors degrees in nine majors as well as several graduate study programs, each of them disciplines of the creative arts. There are three programs of study that fall under the Industrial Design umbrella: Product, Transportation, and Environmental Design. I am a Product Design student, at roughly the junior level. It's not as cut-and-dry as at most colleges as the BS degree curriculum is squeezed into just a three year program. It's intensive and it's stressful and it's more than a full time job, but it's also fun. In a sort of masochistic way.

Art Center has a reputation of design excellence, a label that's once again been validated by the impressive representation of student work at the 2008 IDEA awards. My training here has given me a solid grasp of the traditional skill set associated with ID, as well as the concepts, methodologies, processes and schools of design. I've made lifelong friends who share my fundamental interests and connected with a wide range of professionals eager to impart their knowledge of the industry. These things are largely a result of one's own proactivity, but Art Center has also fostered in me a deep interest in entrepreneurialism, leadership, and bigger-picture ambition. Anything worth having comes at a price though. Both literally and in less tangible ways, the school is extremely costly. The program is notorious for aiding in the breakup of relationships, something for which I am part of the statistic. It also costs a great deal of cold hard cash, missed sleep, anxiety, unhealthy eating habits, and the occasional formation of any variety of chemical dependencies. Which reminds me of something else I've learned here: Red Bull is both a gift and a curse. However, when all is said and done, it really is a unique environment and one that I will look back on with fondness more than anything else.