Thoughts on ITP So Far
Wow, I really thought that once I started grad school, it would be easy to get back into blogging because I’d have so much to write about, but it’s actually harder than I thought. I guess it’s tricky because on an average night I don’t get home until 9 or 10pm, and then I’m tired and still need to work on projects and blogging is the last thing on my mind. I’m also sometimes unsure what to write about because I don’t want to be a total narcissist and assume everyone really wants to know about every detail of my life, so I only want to write about the most interesting or most important things that have happened to me, but I’m not always sure what those are.
Anyway, I figured I should take some time to write about how well I’ve been liking grad school and ITP so far, since I get asked that a lot, and it’s gotten to the point where I kind of assume that everyone who knows me knows, but that’s not necessarily true because there’s plenty of people I don’t talk to on a regular basis. So, I guess it makes an ideal topic for a blog post.
To start things off and get everyone on the same page, I should probably briefly talk about where I’m coming from and how I felt about the Carnegie Mellon School of Design, where I did my undergrad. I was talking to an ITP second-year, Krystal, last weekend, and she said she has a very complicated relationship with ITP. That’s probably a good way to describe how I feel about CMU Design. When I first heard about CMU, I read that it excels in both engineering/computer science and the arts, so I figured it was an ideal environment for somebody wanting to do a little of both. Unfortunately, the reality didn’t quite work that way. I blame the School of Design moreso than the university as a whole, for taking a rather backwards view on integrating technology into the curriculum or at least providing a better environment for students interested in technology, but there’s also more that CMU could’ve done to foster opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration. It’s something they consistently list as one of their strengths, but I wasn’t satisfied. And while a lot can be said for creating your own opportunities when your environment doesn’t provide you with them, ultimately, there’s only so much you can do without a community that shares your interests backing you, and I didn’t feel like I had that at Carnegie Mellon. I finished my four years feeling somewhat disappointed, and that’s at the heart of the reason why I decided to go straight to grad school.
In that context, ITP so far has been everything I’ve ever wanted and more. It’s great to no longer feel like the black sheep, to know I’m a member of a community that cares about the same things I do. There’s a great deal of diversity among the students, with people’s backgrounds ranging from art/design to engineering to politics to theater to dance to philosophy to a million other things, but everyone does agree on the core value that art and technology can be combined together to do really great things for humanity.
A couple of nights ago, I realized that I’m having discussions on a weekly or sometimes even daily basis about the future of technology and its relationship with people. Not the next-gen iPad but the really experimental stuff that we won’t see for another five or ten years. It gave me this warm, glowy feeling inside because this is really what I’ve wanted to be doing. Why couldn’t I have done this during the previous four years??
There are certainly things I dislike about ITP, however. One of them is the size of the program. I know that in time that will probably be one of its benefits — one of my teachers said at a lecture last night, “One of the best reasons to do grad school is the people you’ll meet while you’re there.” — but right now, the fact that I’m one of 122 first-years and 220 or so students in the program total, is really incredibly terrifying. The large majority of them are still complete strangers to me (I don’t even know everyone’s names yet!), and being in a room with over a hundred people I don’t know is pretty much my worst nightmare. I often find myself in a pretty much constant state of heightened social anxiety when I’m at school. After spending two years of high school taking all my classes with the 7 other IB students, and most of undergrad with the 15 or so Communication Design majors, I’ve gotten used to small, intimate groups of people I know very well, and the situation at ITP is very hard for me to deal with.
One of my teachers at CMU warned me that one of the worst things about ITP are the students, because there are a fair number of them who are just rich and don’t know what they want to do with their lives so they come and do this program they’ve heard cool things about. I actually haven’t gotten that perception so far. Some people’s backgrounds have made me wonder what led them here of all places, but I’m not going to judge whether they have a valid reason to be here or not. As long as you agree with the core values of the program and are interested in getting your hands dirty and making things, why not? What does bother me a little is that there are people who are very interested in partying, and the program does have the reputation of having students who party a lot, but I don’t have the impression that anybody is paying $40,000 a year just to come here and party. I’m glad about that.
I’m also a little underwhelmed by this first semester. The classes aren’t terribly challenging, I haven’t picked up a lot of new skills, and most of the projects are short and basic and not very exciting. I realize that I’m definitely in the minority of students who feel this way; most of the first-years are feeling completely overwhelmed, largely because most of them came in not knowing any programming, so between ICM and Physical Computing, they’re feeling very challenged. I know I should give it time and also just enjoy it, because next semester things are almost certainly going to get tough, but I guess I just want this semester to feel more meaningful than it currently does.
We’re also half a semester in, and I’m no closer to figuring out a specialization or even a direction for my thesis. This is not necessarily a fault of the program or even a huge concern because I still have time to figure it out, but it’s just an observation. So far, for better or for worse, I haven’t figured out where, within this very broad field of new media, my passions truly lie. I can’t even imagine people like my friend Deborah in one-year masters programs, who have to do a thesis next semester. I’m totally not there yet.
In short, I would say that so far I’m immensely satisfied, although I do have my own moments of discomfort and apprehension and fear. But there hasn’t been a single time when I’ve felt like this wasn’t the right thing for me to be doing, and that makes me incredibly happy. I don’t want this to be like CMU, where I come out on the other end wondering whether I made the right decision.