Scholarship Application

My immediate educational pursuits are as follows: complete a degree in Industrial Design with an exchange term at an international school and a number of applicable internships at established design and/or technology firms.
My hope is that I can compliment this growth with the places and experiences I currently draw from: a BA in Art History and Professional Writing, six years of international bicycle racing, and solo explorations throughout the Middle East.
If my education can take me anywhere I hope it is towards a career in design. And I’d like to make a distinction between education towards a specific goal (a job) and education as a component to success (living a great life). This is where a Datatel Scholarship could lend a hand.
Last month I was chatting online about careers, life and everything with a good friend of mine currently hammering out his master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering; I’ll repeat his advice here to make a point.
“Jeff,” he said, “specialize in a field and you’ll be able to make big dollars consulting.” And I agreed that that was probably a good path for him to take. For myself, I couldn’t disagree more.
OK, there’s some truth to what he says. I know I want to be a designer and at the Emily Carr Institute I’ve specifically chosen Industrial Design. Based on my eventual degree I’ll happen to know more about three-dimensional concepts, materials, manufacturing processes, etc. But what my degree is really going to impart, or rather what I plan on getting out of it, are the concepts, skills and methods for solving problems, be they industrial design-related or not.
I haven’t always felt this way. I didn’t have this philosophy figured out until the end of my first university degree. Nor am I banking on thinking this exact way after my second. But for now I’ll let idealism get the better of me; I may not be this fortunate indefinitely.
Thus, I can say exactly where I want to go with my education and my career: everywhere. I know what I’m interested in: everything. If that sounds overly glib and dilettantish, well, that’s exactly what I’m getting at. I find there’s enough grim reality facing the career paths of my generation: lack of job security, the off-shore brain drain, the economy in general, so I’ve hit upon two primary concepts:

• That it’s never too late to get what you want, to take carpe diem to heart (if Nike hadn’t taken it first I’d tattoo Just Do It on my arm as a reminder);
• That there are many paths to get where you want to go, that some paths are better than others, and that it’s entirely up to you to choose.

Again, there’s a more succinct way of putting this that I only just distilled over coffee with a designer friend of mine earlier this January. Responsibility is the word, and I’m beginning to think it’s something to pay attention to in terms of getting wherever it is I want to go.
In the few years since I made a conscious decision to take control of my life I realized that doing so is really taking responsibility for myself and the path I choose, the wins I make, and the mistakes I learn from. A Datatel Scholarship would permit me to take this responsibility to another level. I can be specific here, too, so I’ll close with three ways a Datatel Scholarship would make a major difference in my life:
1. Financial: it will clearly reduce my student loan debt;
2. Confidence: knowing my efforts in class (my grades) and those out of class are acknowledged;
3. Set An Example: and thus encourage my peers to excel in their pursuits towards such a goal.