Things I Wish I Knew as a Young Creative

Honing your skills takes sooo long

    The Digital Summer Clinic of 2022 has come to an end. These last nine weeks have contained a series of incredible experiences. As with all things in life, there was also a share of unfortunate circumstances. The worst of it occurred during this final week. I caught Covid, again, meaning I had to work my final week remotely and miss out on our end of the clinic party. 

    My internship partner and I made a summary of our accomplishments while working with Intermode. Looking back at everything we've done made me think of the process for each project. They taught me, and reminded me, of things I wish I knew when I was younger.

Don't Feel Guilty for Using Your Resources 

    My education is one of my biggest priorities and I have made it a point to be well-rounded. Since 2017, I have received two associate degrees and a certificate, and I'm finishing up my bachelor's degree this academic year. On the creative side, I have taken multiple courses in photography, videography, and graphic design. Unfortunately, I haven't continued working with all of these crafts regularly. And so, when I started working on my projects for this internship I felt like a deer in headlights at first. 

    I would open an Adobe application like Illustrator or Premiere Pro and fiddle around with the tools to get reacquainted. Then, as I was working, would get frustrated when something wouldn't function the way I anticipated or because it was taking longer than I felt was valid. It took these thoughts and feelings to push me to use Google for help. And it was amazing!

    If you're like me, then you may often try to avoid looking like you don't know what you're doing. It feels like there's already enough pressure to do a great job and a need to justify that you deserve to be in this position. The imposter syndrome is massively impactful. If I could go back in time and give myself a pep talk for this internship, I would beg myself to skip most of the frustrating parts and get straight to searching for answers. It would look a little like this:

    "Googling your questions does not make you look stupid. Honey, no one cared how you got to your results. Resources are there for a reason so please use them! It honestly helped you not pull out your hair, and you learned how to do things you didn't cover much in school."

Stay Curious and Dive Deeper

    While working on my projects, I had specific ideas of how I wanted them to look but realized that I didn't know how to execute them. For example, while putting together some videos I realized that I needed to color grade them. We very briefly went over color grading in my video classes but it was not something I prioritized at the time. My lack of experimenting with this function back then led to a plethora of questions during my internship.

    This curiosity is something I have grown to appreciate. I enjoyed looking up tutorials and trying my hand at repeating the process. With more practice, I'm sure the results could have been better but I'm still happy with how the color grading on my project turned out.

    Once I felt comfortable looking up something I already had a bit of knowledge of, it encouraged me to explore things I knew nothing about. On the topic of color grading, I knew a little about how to make universal edits, but I dove deeper and learned how to edit specific areas of a scene. There is so much more to learn about editing video than I will probably learn from similar situations. 

    I am a communication major and minoring in public relations, so my creative education is not that of someone who specializes in videography, photography, or graphic design. Still, I do as much as I can and to the best of my abilities. If that means taking a deeper look at the projects I'm working on, I do so without question. Growing, adapting, and honing my skills is what I plan on doing throughout my career.

Be Adaptive

    This internship absolutely reinforced my reasons for naming this blog Adaptive Creative. It has been my belief that I should be prepared for anything, and if I can't be prepared for it then I should be open to it. For the most part, the work I did this summer was what I was hoping for. However, there were some complications that I had not taken into account when making my plans. No one can plan for every issue. We just plan for all of the ones we can think of. 

    Before the clinic started, I thought being adaptive meant being able to do anything. Now, it also means being able to make things work at any time. Time was the biggest challenge that forced me to adapt my plans. Not necessarily the thought of 'there is never enough time.' It was more along the lines of working on someone else's schedule. 

    This is an issue I've heard about before but this was my first real hands-on encounter. Getting work done as it pertains to a company's timeline was vastly different than I had expected. Through a little Covid into the mix and you have yourself a great time. About a month ago, almost everyone at Intermode caught Covid aside from myself and my internship partner. This delayed our initial calendar expectations. Other delays occurred due to manufacturing, shift times, and the amount of time projects take to bring together. Ultimately, being adaptive is something I would remind myself of because it's always going to be beneficial. 

Conclusion

    I'm certain there are more lessons to be applied here, but these are the three that stand out to me the most. The Digital Summer Clinic was amazing and I'm so grateful to have spent my summer doing meaningful work. My adventure continues this fall as a field manager for the Center for Digital Engagement. Between classes and work, I hope I have the time to make a blog post here and there. 

    Thank you for tuning in with me, I wish you all the best and tons of success!

- The Adaptive Creative