visiting artist workshop: peter buchanan-smith
I’ve got a little less than two weeks before the end of my summer and beginning of my Thesis year at the MICA Graphic Design MFA program. I have been especially reflective this week as it’s been a whole year since I moved my life from San Francisco to Baltimore. A lot has changed—new city, new school, new home. But more than that, it feels as though this experience at grad school brought me to an entirely new phase of me.
My relationships with my siblings and my parents has changed a lot. I actually tell my mom about the things going on in my life, I see my brother as the doctor he’s studied so hard to be, and I swoon over the pictures my sister sends of her basset hound. It’s the little things that I love. My friends support me in my crazed calls of “what am I doing??” and I cherish them dearly for all of it.
As I start my second year, I’ve been asking myself, has it been worth it to come to MICA? I see it as a indulgent investment in myself. I can get a Masters, so I can teach, yes. But it’s also, get a master and learn from Ellen Lupton, see how my peers grapple with design problems (and life problems too). It’s exciting to reset your life. Grad school allows for that opportunity. No one knows who you were before you came, so you can become whoever you want. You have no job when you graduate, so you gun for the big one once you are out. It’s exhilarating and scary to know that I’ll be presenting my thesis in a couple of weeks with no real understanding of what it will look like come May.
This reset has done me well. I trust it will be just add another notch to this new me.
duende 