I wanted to be a paleontologist when I grew up.

I had so many dinosaur encyclopedias, dinosaur toys, and I was only a little afraid of Jurassic Park. I got older, my interests shifted, I found out you spend a lot of time outside in the middle of nowhere digging if you’re a paleontologist and I was very much an indoor kid, I still am.

I developed an interest in video games. I played them on and off growing up but it wasn’t a huge draw for me, some Tetris, a little Pokemon, a smidge of Tony Hawk. Until a friend in eighth grade told me to play Halo 2 with him, then it was all over.

Games were much more vast and social than I realized and I was hooked. Suddenly I wanted to be a coder, I wanted to be part of game dev. Even though I never cared much for math, and I’d never done any sort of coding, at all. I pivoted my high school career, took more math than I needed and maybe it was over-exertion, or maybe it was my steadily declining mental health—senior year I abruptly realized I don’t want to be a coder.

I took as many art classes as I could up through middle school. I was one of the few kids who never stopped drawing as they got older. I just liked it. It was nice to make something and show friends—or hide from friends and desperately hope they want to see it and ask you directly. However, high school art classes weren’t clicking for me, I liked drawing but I had so little confidence and the classes were so big I could barely get guidance from teachers.

I took a couple of introductory Graphic Design classes through a program with a local community college. I was fumbling through photoshop and illustrator and having a blast. Unfortunately I was still a high schooler so I couldn’t see the obvious then.

Game dev felt so far away from me, I couldn’t bring myself to be a coder, and I didn’t see myself as talented enough for the artistic half. I was at a standstill, I graduated school without a plan for college whatsoever.

I needed to be anywhere else. Which unfortunately brought me to Arizona, but I had time to think. I tried a bit of schooling but I quickly realized i needed to be anywhere else, again. I wanted to move to Seattle, I wanted mild weather and was still a little obsessive about game dev proximity. I checked out two schools when I visited, Digipen and Cornish College of the Arts. The former I was certain was my pick, the latter I was just curious about.

The differences between the schools were night and day, I knew college wasn’t forever but 4 years is still a long time, especially when you’re starting later than everyone else. I had to pick the one I knew would be best for me, Cornish.

I signed up for the Cornish tour as interested in the Art department, but it wasn’t until they went over the Graphic Design department that it suddenly clicked. That was where I needed to be.

It was still a rocky path through my college career but it finally felt like the right path. I was loving what I was doing at last.

Digital programs and design systems are where I thrive. A careful line of technical and artistic precision. Graphic design had always been the direction I wanted to go and all these years later it still makes the most sense to me.