It's funny I say that because that term is so elastic. Almost any job could be labelled a designer job. Given that you could be a designer from the day you learn how to draw on the walls as an infant. Some people would argue that squiggles drawn on walls in crayon is fine art, but I would say that's an insult to babies given some fine art I've seen.
I suppose I really only called myself I designer after I did a small course on introductory design. 'Til then I never really had any experience to certify that I was one. That was two years ago. Since then I have been saying yes to all kinds of opportunities and haven't looked back. That's the strange thing about education at a tertiary level. "You're only as good as your last show" is a common saying, but in the educational world it's more like you're only as good as your last yes.
Tertiary is a place to find out how driven you can be. I've seen some people who have no drive to pass, most of them have enough drive to scrape by and a few have enough drive to get to the top. The strange thing is that your drive in one moment in your life is not the drive you're stuck with your whole life. Everybody has drive, but it's a case of finding something that drives you to your best potential, and that's half the battle of tertiary I believe.
In primary school you're driven by your parents, sometimes literally. In high-school you're more driven by your friends and teachers. But tertiary is the place to drive yourself. I guess it reflects aging, but by the time you get to tertiary education level it's more about maturity.
When I was in high-school I had various role models tell me, "You'll love it in university!" or "University will be a great place for you!" I'm still not sure if they meant it would be a great place for me to discover myself or if they meant that the style of education was going to suit me more than the bureaucratic style of previous schools. Either way, those people needed a schooling in me before they recommended schooling for me.
The best thing I found after dropping out of university and going to design classes was that there was plenty of liberty in design. Like I said before, anyone's entitled to the term designer. But that's the beauty of it. I know that for some people it takes four years before they can call themselves a lawyer. Or alternatively upwards of five years before they can call themselves architects. On my first day of design school I could call myself a designer.
And that's awesome.
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