Tuesday, April 28, 2009

crazy humble....

ok well now that i've told you how excited i am for my internship. Let's talk about what happened today. The complete opposite. Before today i kept thinking "heck yes i'm accomplishing my dreams!" ... ok so here's a fact about emily you may or may not know i have a very vivid imagination which sometimes gets carried away haha. i kept thinking oh i'm going places now! i'm going to get up there one day and be a huge designer, i'm going to have my own line of fabrics and furniture and design million dollar homes and And AND AND.... whelp i got humbled today. Today i had a final project due and i had to present it to my class, my prof., and a local interior designer that used to teach at Utah State. Well while i was working on this "lovely" project last night around 10:30 i lost almost all the work i had done and had to redo all of it. that one was a ARE YOU KIDDING ME? moment. i may have used some choice words at that moment. my "love" of computer problems also deepened. i didn't get to perfect anything. And designers demand perfection or otherwise it's marked as worthless. that's a constant pressure that is hanging over our heads. but somehow we still strive for the impossible. i had to do the bare bones to survive for this one. i stayed up all night to get it done. around seven thirty i put it on a powerpoint and went out the door to get to my presentation on time. i walk in with my sweats, electric purple hat to hide my bad hair that had developed and camouflage my stress ridden face (pimples, dark circles, and all)... yup most everyone was dressed nicely. "oh crap. should have thought of that one." then i went to put my PowerPoint on the computer and look at my meager four slides... aaaand somehow half my lines on my elevations were... what? yep that's right. gone. they looked like chicken scratches. i was still surprisingly positive at this point. " i can b.s. this.... it'll be ok. just smile. you can fake through this." .... umm ya maybe not. It get's to my turn and i present what i had to my best ability... do you know that feeling that you know that you are crashing and burning and everyone is watching and all you want to do is pause reality and yell REDO! and everything started over. if only. After i had completely crashed and burned in all my blazing glory and was still a burning ball of disaster. The guest designer looked at me and stated very matter of factly, this may not be word for word but VERY close because it has been embedded into my brain for all time, "i would never put money into your project." "i would never take you seriously as a legitimate designer." "you have pieces but none of them fit." shock is all i felt at this point. while this person was looking at me, looking at all that i had scrambled together, she had managed to smash every ambition i ever had and created a bucket full of self doubt, feelings of failure, inadequacy, and questioning. Standing there taking these verbal blows i looked forward and saw my friend josie's jaw drop. She was all i could focus on.... but not too intensly just because i was trying to hold back all the tears and emotion that was throbbing in my chest. After all of this public humiliation i proceeded to my seat. I tried not to look at anyone in the face for fear i would just explode into tears. I felt like i was just floating and all i could think about was what she had said. The words were just spinning around and around making me want to just run away from all of them. Then as i was sitting there i heard someone say my name and i turned and saw a note shoved in my direction. Still avoiding any sort of eye contact for fear of the inevitable internal combustion i took it and looked on the front of it said EM with love. Inside the folded piece of paper it in the fliud red pen of someone who cared it said:

Dear Em,
Do not listen to anything they are saying! They don't know what happened to you last night and we ALL know you are a
KICK BUTT DESIGNER!
love you- Bri i <3 u design! -kels
p.s. i would pay you a MILLION bucks for your kick ass services.

ya there was no way stopping the hoover damn that had built up inside me after reading that beautiful and sweet note. i just couldn't help it! It was so nice to know that i had such awesome friends supporting me. I love you guys. Everything wrapped up and we went out into the hall and uh haha of course took a picture! why wouldn't we?! i looked b-e-a-utiful or like medusa. whichevs. ha... can't wait to un-tag myself from THOSE on facebook :D

in conclusion: i might have needed to be humbled a little. although i think it was unfair and harsh.

questions: oh me! me! i have some! what am i? a designer? or just pretending? am i delusional in thinking i can achieve anything? am i even any good at all? did i just get lucky with Kelly Wearstler?

lesson learned: 1. prepare for the worst. 2. some people are MEAN 3. i am surrounded with amazing friends that are there for me. i'm not alone.

1 comment:

  1. girl i freaking love you!!! what a day...what a day!!! you have amazing talent and you really do kick ass! can't wait to hear about all your adventures in la...ps my blog is thegallofam.blogspot.com just in case you want to check it out...

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