For the next while on this blog, I want to reflect on and talk a bit about my thesis project.
In July 2019 I began working on what would be an almost year-long project, to end off my undergraduate degree in Industrial Design at OCAD University. My thesis journey began way earlier than that though. I remember moments after I saw my OCAD acceptance email, my mind went to my thesis project. What am I going to do for my thesis project? ... Can you imagine? I hadn't even started attending the school yet and I was already thinking about my thesis.
Thesis, I find, is often inflated into something more mysterious and more intimidating than what I discovered once I actually got there. It's like the final boss level you have to defeat before you win the game. Before you get there, you hear all sorts of stories from upper years and classmates that are generally either horror stories of students getting roasted in front of their class after pulling 5 all-nighters in a row, or you hear about the gifted legends who seemed to conquer that final level like it was nothing. You also hear both vaguely encouraging and discouraging descriptions of what it's like, as if the whole thing can be described in a couple sentences. What you didn't really hear though, was how a large majority of students pass that level, and move on with their lives. What you didn't hear, was that the supposed "gifted legends" struggled like everyone else, if not more. What you didn't hear, was that thesis is actually an amazing opportunity to apply everything you've learned up until that year, to test your intuition, and to work on a potentially fulfilling project. The beauty was in the learning. I confess I can only say that now that it's been almost six months since I last touched it. Having had that time away from it I think I can, with a much clearer head, take a look at it again because I think many aspects of the experience were profound enough to warrant some deeper reflection.
In this series of posts, I hope to delve into my personal experience of the project, how the experience challenged and revealed. To record the things that may not have a place in my thesis book or my portfolio. Nonetheless it's in my opinion that the story of my thesis project would not be complete without these things. So they will have a space to live here.
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