I graduated last Saturday. The last few weeks seemed to happen very quickly and I was anxious about 75 percent of the time but in the end I felt a huge relief after I sat down at the ceremony. I’ve been in school for quite some time [started as a bio major in 2010] and to finally be done is a relief to me.
I didn’t always like learning and at one point I had even dropped out but I went back and I found something that I did want to learn. Something that made me love learning. Ever since I discovered I could make a career out of this thing that I love I sought out to learn everything I can to create the stories I want to make.
This final semester was also some of the toughest because of all the new things I took on. I learned how to rig models in Maya in may different ways and how to make clean and easy to use controls. I also learned how to capture and clean motion capture data and how to use that footage to create previz shorts. I got to work on a game from conception to a somewhat finished product, making animations that personalize the npcs. I led a team of animators in bringing a storyboard to a finished short and it even won an award. And finally I taught myself after effects because I enjoy motion graphics and how much of an effect it adds to the animation.
I’m so excited for the future, it is truly unknown to me, but for the first time in my life it is not freaking me out. It’s kind of a big deal to me to not be feeling the anxiety of the future, it was something that really held me back before. I almost let anxiety and depression steal my life away from me. When you’re emotionally stuck it’s hard to pull yourself out of it and looking back on everything I appreciate every one person who supported me, believed in me and who helped me. Be it letting me hang out with them when I couldn’t bring myself to go to class to sitting with me and going over how I can improve my work.
I can’t wait to see the future.