My mentor has been a great help to me overall in the process of working on my Genius Project. I have been able to ask him questions whenever I needed help. For instance I asked him about how to work with clients and create something that they will like, but will also hold it’s value and remain true to my design aesthetic. This gave me invaluable information that I will probably be able to take with me into my college career and my life moving forward. However he is an architect and I think it would be very helpful to get information from a practicing interior designer. So I have decided to ask an interior designer to help me on my project. After narrowing down my list of about 10 designers working and operating in and around the San Diego area I have picked my final 2 I will be asking. These select few experienced Interior Designers share a similar taste and design sense to my own and will hopefully be able to aide me in furniture planning and overall spatial usage. Not only will this mentoring help me achieve my goals for my Genius Project, if all goes well this will also be a great informative experience in working with the interior configuration of a space. Prior to this I have only learned what I know from sites like Houzz, or Pinterest. This is a great way to gain knowledge however learning the reasons why things look good and the information that can only be gained by a designer that has years of work experience. I sent my official emails inviting them to be my mentor yesterday so hopefully I will get a response soon. It will be very interesting to see what they say about my Genius Project and if they can help me with general design tips.
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After spending months building the concept for my project and then working on it tirelessly, I have found that it has actually been very beneficial to my growth. Though architecture and interior design have always been immensely important parts of my life, I have never been given the opportunity to create designs for real people. Even in Architectural Design there never was a project that really challenged me. Unbelievably in my entire class there was only one, I repeat only ONE assignment where you even designed a house. For most students this was probably a super difficult assignment, and the rest of the time spent learning all the different building styles that exist might have been a help to many others. However for me what I craved to do was never allowed. So after years of similar experiences in summer camps and classes I decided that to use the Genius Project as my outlet to create real designs for real people would be an amazing experience. And overall it really has been. Sometimes it is very hard to put my own sensibilities and tastes aside to please a client, but that is exactly what I need to learn. In the real world I won’t always be designing a home exactly perfect with impeccable taste, in fact most of time architects and interior designers are forced to meet the client's needs and sacrifice the perfect design to make their client happy. I just had to design a small 6 room house with two bedroom and a shared bath in a gypsy/log cabin bungalow style home as someone’s dream house! But this is exactly what my project is about. Each person on this earth has an unbelievably unique perspective on the world so why is it that we build thousands of boxed-in and soulless identical homes. Looking back on this process, working through these struggles and gaining these important career lessons are a great example of what the genius project has done for me.
After many weeks of great progress I have unfortunately come to a grinding halt. I have done almost nothing since last week’s blog post, now don’t think that this is because I have not been doing anything. This past week has been filled with so much work that I have physically not had any extra time to work on my project. I have been in an unending frenzy to complete my letters of recommendation for college which you may think is a simple process, but don’t be fooled like I was, it is a deceptively difficult journey. To get letters of recommendation or LOR’s as they call it includes a personal “brag letter” and an in depth survey, and thats only for asking a teacher. Should you want to ask a counselor, like all colleges reccomend, you must complete an almost 25 question survey that can only be answered in paragraph form! That is of course in addition to all my other homework and the genius project. With all this going on I have been unable to do little more than perfecting old sketches. In order to make up for lost time I will have to work much harder and complete 1 full home by hopefully wednesday of next week. This has taught me a valuable lesson in prioritizing the tasks at hand. It can be extremely challenging to juggle assignments and responsibilities, but I’ve found if I make lists and plan out exactly what I need to get done and when it should be done by, I have a much easier time completing things. Looking at my genius project so far I am very pleased with how things are going. I think I have really found my nook and I am happy to get back on tract so to speak, (pun intended) and continue work on my project.
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