Ever changed courses around like 2-3 times? Or more? Trying to figure out where you're going to go afterwards? Or have you found your passion? I have but I don't want to follow it. This might be the biggest mistake of my life, but maybe living out your mistakes are what makes life interesting (or maybe I'm just saying that to make myself feel better?)
So this is not so much a visual documentary but a written documentary....of the thoughts of just one of the contributors to this blog.
So I'm having trouble sleeping, because my mind is racing at 100km/h. I think you know what I mean if you've ever stayed up thinking really hard on a particular subject, event or person even. In this case, I'm thinking about my final year project for my course Fashion Design at UTS. It's been a long and hard slog, always struggling to find motivation or a sense of direction (but then who really does know at the tender age of 22 and just starting out in the world?). So one of the reasons for my sudden appetite to writing was from a lecture I attended today called 'Q&A with Mia Freedman' which was organised by a society called BUiLD UTS, and of which I am also part of. She is the editor of a growing website mamamia.com that she started some years ago after in the magazine industry as editor of COSMO, CLEO, DOLLY and is this amazing speaker and a completely driven and intelligent person. I couldn't help but be totally inspired by her.
So Mia got me thinking about where I wanted to go next. I've been planning my career (or putting a lot of effort into trying to) since the end of high school, and since I didn't put a lot of effort into planning what to study during high school, I figure it was the least I could do in preventing the same mistake from happening again. Choosing fashion was bad, but could not going on be worse? I've thought about being a fashion designer, a patternmaker, an illustrator, an accountant, an investment banker, a mining engineer, a doctor, a marketing agent etc etc. but the one that keeps coming back to me and makes the most sense given my situation was fashion buyer. I'm not sure why but I think it encapsulates many aspects that I've enjoyed. For one instance, I don't know if there are many people that love working in retail. I certainly did. What I loved about retail was selling a product to a consumer, figuring out how to match their needs and seeing the product sell. Thinking of ways and reasons of why a certain product appealed to different people and being a part of the process of commerce, just essentially making a customer happy, and seeing a profit. I saw it as a game of monitoring how something sells to maximising sales and looking at the figures, liaising with suppliers and negotiating a better price for reselling. So I am a numbers sort of gal, but I am also a visual person. I like looking at pretty things and I appreciate beauty in products. I like being part of the fantasy that is fashion but not so much the grueling process of designing it, making it etc. I like more the end finished product rather than the process let's just say, but I like getting it out there, and making sure people use it. Its a bit of number crunching, a bit of looking at beautiful things so its the perfect balance of commerce and art, which ironically was my other offer of study at the University of Sydney but then I denied it to study fashion design and international studies because I thought I was being smart but I was actually being stupid and naive into thinking I could make it in the tough industry of fashion and because of course being it also having the highest UAI or ATAR (even higher than medicine believe it or not) made me think I had the upper hand into getting a high paid job in end. So that was biggest-mistake-of-my-life.
Another reason why I think being a buyer stuck in my mind was that ever since first year, all I've ever really been passionate about was sourcing supplies (apart from illustrating, which I'll get to later). I spent a lot of time on the internet and in stores buying fabric, trims, seeing where to buy cardboard, paper, going on ebay to buy cheap bobbin cases etc and just comparing prices or which had the best quality. I like to shop, and being a buyer is like having a budget I can spend, without amassing junk in my house and also being able to re-sell that product to turn a profit- seems like a perfect job to me!
My ideals for the perfect job have definitely changed throughout the years, if not hours since only yesterday I was telling my best friend that all I wanted in a job was to make money and that I wouldn't enjoy working in it if I wasn't getting enough financial incentive. That is still the case, but I'm more interested in having a good experience in my job now. I want to love my job and be fantastic at it. I want to feel like I am meeting and exceed those targets but also that there is a position I can work towards that can give me financial independence. which leads me to the question of, how do I get there?
The final year in fashion is supposed to showcase your talents to the world, in the hope that somebody will hire you based on the value you will give to the company. Currently my lecturer thinks that I should be doing a illustrative project, because he thinks I'm good at it. but I personally don't think I am good enough of an illustrator to live off it. So I'm also thinking I want to create a fashion collection. Perhaps as a buyer, it would be good to go through the process of creating a collection, sourcing the sample machinists, getting the proper manufacturer who can create your prints, managing the deliveries if you're doing offshore manufacturing, and just generally seeing how the industry works. So here's my solution: to do a illustration book to a publishable standard, and to create a fashion collection that feeds off that, basically the other way around to how its usually done.
Hopefully I will get an entry-level position in fashion buying to test out my suitability in this career, and hopefully my enthusiasm will not wane. Mia Freedman started out doing work experience at the age of 19 and worked her way up. She didn't know that she would eventually end up editor of some of the biggest magazines in this country but she worked hard, got a mentor and kept her eye on the goal. She says sometimes you will slack off a bit in your work or studies because you think you aren't getting where you'd like but she also said to stick it out. The way to make work experience work for you is to add value to the company, make that company rely on you for a particular job so that they will suddenly need you when you're not there. As she says she likes to 'leave a Mia shaped hole'. What will you be doing these holidays?
Wish me luck!
-AE
(revised from 16/3/12)
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