Reflection on the past year.
Today I wanted to sit and reflect on my MA experience. I came across my original application statement and read through it. As I started to read it, it felt like it was written by a very different me, a past me. In fact, most of my memories of the last year feel like they were in a space separated from reality. Attending university, sitting at the desk in my student accommodation late into the night, it all feels like it existed in a parallel reality. A lot of the story of who I was seems to have gotten lost in the process of pursuing higher education. I suppose academia can change you in unexpected ways.
Did I achieve the goals I set for myself?
Yes and No.
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On one hand, I discuss taking charge of my life and the opportunities of UAL. Those opportunities were very different from what I expected. Access to maker labs and resources were rare. There was a lot more I could have taken advantage of, but I was busy putting myself together as a new individual. Healing old cracks and creating a new mindset. This was work as well, work that I’m proud of having done.
Then there is the subject of having achieved my personal goal. I referred to myself as a creator of object in my application. I wanted to be more than that. I realised reading through, how much effort I had put into educating myself in the years before coming to London. In that light, I managed to push myself into that new reality. As I reflect, I no longer think as a simple creator. I think in complexities, in storytelling, in a process of becoming. I’m not sure when this shift may have happened, but I am sure that my experience at UAL has played a role in it.
In hindsight, I could have opted for many other courses, but applied imagination is the one that made the most sense at the time. I have few regrets. Maybe we did not have the best circumstances, or perhaps we did have the worst collaborative unit seen the course’s history, but I am glad to have had the opportunity. Sometime the voice of naysayers echos in my mind, and sometimes I start believing them. What I make of it is up to me.
