tags:
• otis /
• graduation /

senior show recap

Thursday, May 08 2008

so it happened, and i’m essentially done. industry night is the real senior show, and the public showing tomorrow is kind of just for fun. so i’m pretty much done with college; i graduate the day after tomorrow.

for those not in the know, senior show is the end all be all of my education. i kept trying to tell myself it wasn’t, but it is. it’s an announcement not just of our senior thesis, but of ourselves to the working world. they invite all the important companies and we spend all year getting ready to show them our work, our projects and our portfolios. graduation is an afterthought compared to this, hardly important at all.

i screwed it up. i bombed. my work was good, too. thegoodsideofus is the bomb, and everyone loves it. our space looks unbelievably amazing, you’ll see it soon, when i take pictures. i mean, i didn’t take any photos, but i plan on it tomorrow. my reel is pretty decent. my marketing materials are adorable and fun and memorable. and i went all out, giving it everything i had and then some to be ready for tonight. and i think i positioned myself pretty well, being multidisciplinary and the only real web designer at the show.

but my ambition, where once was great, got the best of me, finally. i had two spots, because i had two theses: motion graphics on the first floor, and thegoodsideofus and my non-motion portfolio upstairs on the sixth floor. when i was upstairs, i missed all the amazing motion graphics companies who were downstairs. when i was downstairs, i missed all the amazing web and print companies who were upstairs. mograph kids got business cards and interest from companies like royale and buck and brand new school and national television and imaginary forces. i got one card from roger, which is cool, but one card, literally, all night. upstairs, they collected cards from some people, the most interesting being yahoo, who apparently just loved our site. but i missed em. didn’t talk with them, they didn’t see my face, and they didn’t get to see what a cool guy i am.

so even though it was wholly a success, i feel a lot like a failure. i sincerely hope that i’m wrong, and that all my hard work will pay off, but i’ve got a very dark cloud feeling that tells me that while everyone else is playing with the big kids from the beginning, i’m gonna have to start from the basement again once i get out of here.

it’s not that i didn’t talk to anyone. i met a lot of really nice, cool people. when people came over, i’d say hi. in fact, i had a very long conversation with this amazing guy from a company called the groop, who reminds me so much of our group, the three of us. it was the best conversation i had all night; he asked great questions, and he had great ideas, and he really saw what we did and how it worked out and appreciate it. i couldn’t have asked for a better impromptu interview. and in fact, he was one of the few people that saw my stuff downstairs and sought me out on the sixth floor. i met a lot of people, and that’s cool, but almost everyone i started chatting with wasn’t really in a position to help me out, where as it seemed like everyone else was talking to people who wanted to hire them for a job.

and i know i should be positive about it. but i worked so hard just to miss all the opportunities i was working so hard to get, yano? they were there, and i didn’t catch them. and it’s my own fault, for biting off too much, i guess. i’m just disappointed in myself … maybe tomorrow night will be better.