Design majors may vary in what they do, but how they live is very similar. We are used to high stress, no sleep environments with workloads that make any other major look like elementary school. If you aren't a design major, here is a clue as to what goes on in our heads:
If one more person thinks my major is easy I’m going to scream.
Any design major is not easy. Most of the time we will spend double or triple the time on our school work as you and our workload is project after project all due on the same day. We have no life other than our major and we work our butts off 24/7. So if you think all a design major does is “pick pretty colors,” you’re wrong.
Oh look, everyone, I know is out having a social life and I’m in the studio.
We have no life other than our major. If you can’t find us, we are nine times out of 10 in the studio going on hour 11 of working on one of our many projects. Our friends have learned that if they want to see us, they have to come to us because we don’t have time to go to them. Seeing everyone out having fun on social media baffles us because we can’t comprehend how anyone has time for that.
I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t on the brink of a mental breakdown.
We are constantly in a high stress, no sleep environment and those two mixed together have horrible outcomes. You look at your to-do list for the day and it’s a mile long, and you look at your to-do list for the rest of the semester and it's never ending. We always seem to be under a time crunch and with that, everything always seems to go wrong. We all know what it's like to cry to our moms because we don’t think we can push on.
I got so much sleep last night. I slept for three whole hours.
Your body learns how to run on little to no sleep. We pull all-nighters weekly and when we aren’t staying up to see the sunrise, we are fortunate enough to get a couple hours of sleep. To be honest, our bodies don’t know what to do with a full night sleep anymore. Our friends get entertainment out of our sleep-deprived states, which is all of the time.
Yup, I’m dropping. This is it.
Our thoughts during every single project. It really all gets to you after a while. The multiple all-nighters and the harsh grades you get back sometimes make you question if it is all worth it or not. Then you break out of your sanity and realize this is the only thing you want to do with your life so you suck it up and push on.
If I want to get all of this done I can’t eat or sleep and somehow add four more hours to the day.
Our professors think we’re magicians and can make nonexistent time magically appear. It seems like they assign a new project every day and they are so gracious to make them all due the same week, or better yet, same day. Oh, and they don’t expect us to eat, sleep, or even shower. So please come visit our studio full of tired, hungry, and smelly people.
Everyone has a “hell” week once a month and I have one every week.
Every Monday morning you have to take a big breath and charge into the week. You don’t know how you’re going to make it to Friday alive but you did it last week so you must be doing something right.
I love my major.
Even though design majors are some of the hardest majors out there, it is still our passion and we love what we do. After the all-nighters and mental breakdowns, getting to take a step back and look at our work is so rewarding. We create things that we never dreamed we would be able to make. This is what we want to do with our lives so we are going to continue to push on and pursue our passion.
