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.
\nMy 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.
\nIf 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.
\nLast month I was chatting online about careers, life and everything with a good friend of mine currently hammering out his master\u2019s degree in Mechanical Engineering; I’ll repeat his advice here to make a point.
\n“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.
\nOK, 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.
\nI 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.
\nThus, 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:<\/p>\n
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.
\nIn 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:
\n1. Financial: it will clearly reduce my student loan debt;
\n2. Confidence: knowing my efforts in class (my grades) and those out of class are acknowledged;
\n3. Set An Example: and thus encourage my peers to excel in their pursuits towards such a goal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was chosen to apply for a $1600 US scholarship but I am a fucking idiot and missed the deadline that I had one month to prepare for. Holy crap. Here is my application essay anyways, where I was asked to say what my educational goals were and how this scholarship would make a difference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[3],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/testa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/testa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/testa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/testa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/testa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=297"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/testa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1331,"href":"https:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/testa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297\/revisions\/1331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/testa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/testa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeffwerner.ca\/testa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}