I was trying to describe my project to one of my friends outside the design school over the weekend and she only said it was morbid and she wouldn’t want to do it for a semester.
Throughout my time here I’ve had a lot of conflicting feelings about this school’s lofty ideal of itself as a place of “transition” or “futuring” or yadda yadda yadda when the reality is that nearly all of this program’s graduates are going to end doing product design or UX for a dashboard or mobile app.
I think it would be great if there were more resources so everyone could have better access to end of life planning. It’s a real problem that can reasonably be addressed. I see other groups floundering because this school is telling them they need to radically change the world and fight the system — which is, that’s face it, if you’re paying tuition to attend CMU you are the system.
I think over the past two semesters I’ve become much less enthusiastic about design. Having worked in design for many years I was over the moon enthusiastic to begin with — but I feel like I’ve been stuffed with academia and drifted out to see hoping that the CMU name is going to pull me back to shore.
I’m in transition design now and it is everything we scoff about when thinking of academia. All talk, NO action. Doing online death planning or an app wizard narrated by a ghost is not exciting or system changing but it’s realistic and why did I come here.
I am excited to be doing a workshop. This workshop is coming way too late in the game to make a difference for the jobs I’m applying to now. If the first semester wasn’t such a waste of time would no one stick around and pay for the second year? Is that the point?
