They (whoever “they” is) say that things in life have a way of coming full circle. This has never been truer than for me at this very moment. In about 12 hours, I will start semester number four of grad school, and in about 18 hours, I’ll switch roles transforming from student to teacher.
A brief back-story, for the past 8 months, I’ve been a project lead on a series of design education materials. In the fall, we were able to make friends with administrators at Kindezi Charter School’s. This relationship helped facilitate the development of a design education curriculum with the intention of being taught in a classroom environment.
These efforts have resulted in a 70-hour, and 5-month curriculum that spans the design process and immerses kids ages 8-12 in everything from product design to branding. Tomorrow, I will be piloting this curriculum with the first batch of students in hopes of testing and refining it’s content.
Now, this whole thing is incredibly surreal. Barely 2 years ago I pressed the submit button on my Georgia Tech application. A year and half ago, I took my first design class, and just 8 months ago I got my first design job. In hardly any time my life as a designer has catapulted from not knowing what “Eames” meant to prototyping my own design process.
I feel as though tomorrow is my design due date—that, for two years, I’ve been growing and developing my design knowledge and tomorrow I become a design parent. While I can’t pretend to know what parenting is like, I am filled with anxiety, self-doubt and the sneaking suspicion that these kiddos will see right through me. What, anyways, makes me qualified to teach design? What do I know? I still can’t even articulate the difference between UX and UI!
Yet, despite these fears and anxieties, I am comforted in my love and passion for design. This is perhaps one of my favorite things about design: Success as a designer lies in one’s ability to admit fallibility. It is in the moments we open our minds to the things gone wrong and items left out, that we let in tremendous insights and monumental improvements.
So while I will be Ms. Miller for the next few months, I can wait to also usher in a new group of designers who I can empower to help make this curriculum the best that it can be.
Wish me luck! Also, if any teachers are reading this, I would love any pearls of wisdom or teaching resources you might have.
Living on the Straight Edge 