tell me about it

Sat through tonight’s Crowbar Awards ceremony mostly reading my Mercedes Lackey novel and occasionally making sarcastic comments to Meddy and Simin, poor girls who had to put up with me.

Essentially, the Crowbars are awards given out to creative work by students, including advertisements, photography, film. As we sat through the ceremony (hosted by M*ark Z*ee, who has a terrible sense of humor), the sense of annoyance and pique grew. Most of the entrants were students from design schools - NAFA, LaSalle, Raffles Design Institute. About 98%, in fact.

The more we watched, the more morose we grew. As Ting Kai put it, it was a firm reminder that no company would hire any of us over a poly or design school graduate, in the creative side at least. We aren’t trained for it. We don’t learn the software, we aren’t taught any such thing. In university, what I’ve really learnt is dabbling. We learn a little bit of anything, and hardly specialize in anything. I decided to go into PR because I knew advertising is a dead end for me - the real fun bit about advertising is the creative side, and none of us have an inch over the poly and design school people. No sane person would hire one of us over one of them.

What am I in university for? Yes, we’re groomed for managerial positions. We’re supposed to be comforted by the fact that we’re supposed to be the ones in charge of the poly students in the end. But we come out into the workplace untrained, unsure, and eventually, unwanted.

I knew it. After A Levels I should have gone to LaSalle to do communication design like I originally planned, get the diploma, then upgrade to a degree in advertising design in only one year. Damn it. Instead I chose the atas route, and look where that got me!

Even worse for PPC people who want to go into design - the people who graduate from LaSalle with a bachelor degree in Advertising Design. Seriously, what edge do you have over them? NOTHING. They have degrees, they can work wonders with graphic design that we will never touch on in uni. The best you can do is learn the stuff yourself and make sure you’re damn good at it. Because our advertising portfolios will be nothing compared to theirs.

(I’d like to see the looks on employers’ faces when they see C*aspar’s portfolio, hurhur.)

What about SADAM people? Will they do well?

So generally we were rather upset because we felt that university isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. We’re supposed to be the “smarter” people, the ones who made it into uni. But we aren’t learning anything that the poly people can’t do better! Does a degree make that much difference? Will you hire me instead of a poly student with stellar grades, just because I’m a graduate? When the poly student expects lower pay, has less airs, works harder (or so I’m told about poly students)? Does a uni grad deserve a managerial position more than a poly student? I don’t get it.

Maybe I should have gone to poly instead.

M*axie tried to comfort us saying we’ll end up earning more money than the poly students. Yeah, that’s if we even get hired in those positions. Blah.

Even our beloved PM in his National Day Speech kept stressing poly students. NY Poly this. TP that. Why the hell did I study so hard to get into university for, if no one wants to hire us?

J*an R*yan’s answer to this: “Work harder! All of you, work harder!”

That helps. :/ But she’s really sweet. I told her I was feeling down because I didn’t see why we were only learning to dabble in this and that and never really learning anything important. I honestly don’t think that we learn anything that the poly students can’t do just as well if not better, because they can do all that graphics stuff and we don’t know how to. We just know how to bullshit, and give presentations, and suck up.

What’s my future in the workplace? I have no edge.

The worst part is that we’re just as able to conceptualize campaigns and advertisements as they are. But they’re able to translate that with their graphic design work into real, working advertisements; able to really create and manipulate photographs and graphics expertly so that the finished product is the real thing. Whereas we’re limited to pictures we frantically search gettyimages.com for, and our layouts are constrained to those pictures. We can’t really create like they can. It’s so frustrating!

Work harder work harder.

Need to find a niche.

Am now seriously considering if it’s worthwhile to do a part-time diploma or even degree in visual communication at Raffles Design Institute or LaSalle. Or even NAFA. Have been looking at them tonight to see if I want to do that. Then can study some more don’t have to work, hurhur. And can buy a Mac :D

I hope internship at SAM pulls through. I really want to work at the museum…it’d be fantastic. I’ve more or less resigned myself to PR because I don’t see a future for myself in advertising. I’m not that creative, plus I prefer dealing with people and corporate communications. HR would be really good too. I like HR.

Please, NHB, get back to me soon. :(