Tag: learning

A journey to the unknown

Mia3 Comments
open road
Made in Canva

A journey doesn’t only mean travelling to another city or country. It can also mean a journey to a new life situation or in my case, learning a new skill. It’s not coddiwomple for me because I don’t really know where this road is going. Graphic design is not a new journey for me because I studied it before. But it was such a long time ago so things have changed. I haven’t worked in this industry so this is new to me. I don’t really know how it works. In every school, there are different teachers who have different learning styles. In Helsinki Design School, the people who educate us, have seen the real world in graphic design. Professional teachers don’t have the same experiences as they do.

After learning web design, graphic design seemed to be the next step I wanted to take. One of the reasons was that I wanted to hear professionals opinions about my skills. We have assignments we must do and then the teachers give us feedback on what we have done. At the same time, we learn new things. Last I studied graphic design, photography was my main thing which was the reason why I applied to the school. Things have changed since then and I want different things. I’ve always been praised for my visual skills. That was my strongest suit. Most people in my class haven’t experienced with web design so that’s my advantage. There isn’t much difference between them. The difference is web design is online and graphics in print. I want to concentrate more on the digital side.

Since I’ve had clients before, I’m not totally a rookie in that field. I did it for free so I don’t have experiences with the financial side. I wish I could get paid for doing design but I don’t know if anyone wants to buy my ‘product’ It’s not only about the work. It’s also about marketing which is something I’m not good at. Hiring an outsider to do the work costs money and I don’t have any connections who could do it for free or for a small fee. I don’t think I’ll find any in this school. Finns are not exactly easy with networking. You have to start a conversation to even get any attention but that’s nothing new. Fortunately, there are other ways to network and not just face to face. My classmates all seem to have a lot of experiences and they’re younger than me. The only thing we have in common is wanting to learn graphic design. It’s still early to say what’s gonna happen. It’s quite difficult to get to know people when there’s so many of us and we meet only twice a month.

This journey has just begun and there is a lot to learn. I hope I get better as a designer so I can make a living of it. I already know a lot about creativity. More I see graphic design, more I love it. There’s a lot of good ones out there and I wish I could be as good. When this school is over, I hope this journey will be a coddiwomple because so far my life has gone in different directions without a special goal. I want to combine things I learned in life and get better at it.

 

So familiar but yet so foreign

MiaLeave a comment

foreign

They say you’re never ready, there’s always something new to learn. Something can be so familiar but yet so foreign.

I love learning new things. If they stay in my head is a different matter. I don’t know how many times I tried to learn something but then forgot all about it later. Especially in learning languages. Being bilingual is a bit confusing sometimes. Some words I know what they are in Finnish but then when I try to remember what they are in Swedish, I have to look it up. Or then it’s the other way around. If that wasn’t enough, the same occurs with English. But then I go to an online translator to find the word. That happens quite a lot when I write this blog. If I don’t find the word I’m looking for I usually write things differently or skip it altogether.

Some things you learn by doing them over and over again. But my problem with that is keeping the motivation up. It’s an everyday struggle but I work on it. I don’t think I ever get good at anything since I like a lot of different things. It’s the same with taste in music or movie genres. I like changes. I do things if it feels right at that moment. I never seem to learn by reading. Maybe I’m slow but I rather listen to someone talking about a subject or showing me how to do things. I lose interest quickly if it’s something I find boring. I’m not really good at this self-taught thing. That’s the reason why I’ve gone to school to learn things.

Practice makes perfect the saying goes but I prefer practice makes you better. No one is perfect because if we were, we would all be robots. Foreign things make us familiar but familiar also makes us foreign to things. If we all knew everything at once, there would be nothing left to learn.

The Daily Post is teaching me English

Mia4 Comments

its only wordsAs a non-English person, learning the language is never easy. There are a lot of English words I’ve never heard or seen before. The Daily Post one-word prompt today is; Cacophony. I looked it up on Google like I always do when I don’t know a word and I must say, oh boy what a word to pronounce. In a way, The Daily Post is teaching me English. There has been a lot of words I didn’t know about. I don’t use difficult words in daily life. I come from a working-class background so I don’t know any fancy words in any language. I don’t know why something has to have a difficult word. Simple is always the best. Does knowing fancy words make people feel smart or something? It only makes people feel they’re better than everybody else. You could say things in a simple way. Cacophony could just be called noise. How many English speakers use that word anyway? But learning new words you don’t know can be interesting even if you never use them.

When it comes to the cacophony, I’m quite sound sensitive. I can concentrate if the music is on but if there’s talking or any other noise, I get distracted. Sometimes it even disturbs me so much that I get irritated. Living in a flat even the neighbours moving about in the stairs disturb me. I must have a very good hearing if I can even hear the smallest sounds. Maybe the neighbours are just loud. Party people are the worst. They make so much cacophony when they play loud music and shouts at the same time. If that isn’t enough, some neighbours shut their doors with a bang like they were in a bad mood. Especially at night when you’re trying to sleep and they come home. Bang! Almost giving me a heart attack. You can close your door quieter. There is doorknob for a reason. People have no respect for other people anymore. When I come home at night, I close to door quietly by turning the doorknob. Some are just thick in the head it seems.

Living in a city there’s a lot of cacophonies that you can’t take away entirely. You just have to live with it. But you can get away from it for a while. What’s so good about Finland is that there are places where no one is around. One of them is the forest. In my city, you don’t need a car to get to nature. You can take the bus or cycle there. Even the cemeteries are close by. At weekdays there are workers who use different types of machinery but at the weekend there’s no cacophony. Some peace and quiet for a while are good for your mental health.

That’s the whole cacophony thing. Thank you The Daily Post for teaching me a new word once again. I’m sure I’ll never use the word cacophony but it did fill my English vocabulary.

Tallenna

Tallenna

Tallenna

Tallenna