I have always thought of myself as someone who really knows herself. I take time on a regular basis to hang out with myself, I always have. As long as I can remember, I would go places by myself on occasion to just be alone with my thoughts, or read, maybe even occasionally draw or write something. My assurance in my knowledge of myself always came from the fact that my personality has been relatively consistent throughout my life… until I got to Ad School.
Now that I have been in the Miami Ad School/FIU global strategic communications program for a little over a year I can say that you don’t truly get to know yourself until you have pushed all your limits. I’d like to think that I have always been creative, and to an extent I have. However, training to become a creative professionally, is a whole other ballgame.
Here are some key things that may help aspiring creatives understand what our world is like, and how it may re-define you as a person.
Group Dynamics:
I’ve always been very patient, in my professional and personal life. I used to hire and fire people, lead large conferences and take instruction well. I asked questions, and I always wanted to learn. I was very used to getting praised for my performance. In working on a creative group project, there is no leader or praise. Someone always takes on the “alpha” role, usually me in most cases, and the rest of the team listens and contributes to build the best possible idea.
In situations where there are two “alpha” personalities, compromises have to be made and feelings, at times, will be hurt. This is where one changes the most in ad school. Everyone must learn to work with others, to sacrifice a bit of their personalities to the greater good; the work. You may be thinking, “I’ve worked with others before in my other jobs, I’ll be fine”.
It’s different, trust me. At times you won’t be fine. Ideas are babies, and each person on your team loves theirs the most. For any one baby to grow into fantastic work, many other babies have to die, and it’s not easy for any parent to loose a child. It’s when the village raises the child together that great work is produced.
One bonus piece of advice: Ad school is like high school, except there are no jocks or nerds your reputation is based entirely on the work you do and how you work together in a team. There are creatives you want to work with and creatives you avoid because of their reputations of being late, not doing work, not caring, etc. Don’t be that creative that no one wants to work with. Oh, and ad school is full of the drama kids you knew in high school… some things never change.
Lessons on creating awesome work:
These were all things I had to learn that changed the way I thought and did things. As someone who implicitly trusts herself and has confidence in her ideas, many of these were not easy lessons to learn.
-Never go with your first idea. It may be the best one, but table it until you’ve thought of so many other ideas that you have to sleep for a bit. When you wake up, you’ll have more that you dreamed of and the first idea won’t look so cool.
-There is a fine line between being creatively outrageous and being crazy. Shoot for the moon in your work, but don’t send a brand to the moon unless it belongs there. Your ideas should be cool and awe inspiring, but not for the sake of saying “this is the coolest thing I can think of”, it all has to make sense.
When an idea makes sense.
General lessons I’ve learned that are important, but someone else might not believe me until you’ve had the opportunity to do it yourself:
-Love and trust your planners. It’s so hard to be the one who comes up with ideas to not being involved in the strategy or direction your planners decide is best. They push your limits, and they will make you better. They are creatives too, you just have to give them the space you would want for yourself creatively, and you will end up with better work for it. (Still working on adapting to this one.)
Yea to a good planning team!
-Learn to get sleep whenever you can get it. If you are reading this and want to go to ad school or work in an agency and you stayed up all night watching “Breaking Bad” just because you liked the show, watch it during the evening. Sleep NOW, you’ll wish you had before you went to school.
Every morning until you graduate…maybe after too, we’ll see.
-ALWAYS keep learning, doing the things you love, reading, people watching and exploring your thoughts. All of it makes you better.
Embrace your weird.
Sometimes, you just need your kitty…
-This may not be a big deal to most people, but it is a high concern for people in ad school, we are all sleep deprived, we are all casual, liberal, tolerant and cool people but please remember to: take showers, wear deodorant, show up to meetings on time, do your work before the day it’s due and use headphones when listening to music and watching movies at school. It’s so much more fun when we can all concentrate.