Making a Designer

In high school, I always aspired to be in the field of STEM. I excelled in science from a young age and took a keen interest in biology in high school. Freshman year, I even won Biology Student of the Year. I went on to take AP Biology without a hitch.

So, why did I decide to completely change my future career in my junior year of high school? JEP — Junior English Project — that's why. This was a yearlong project that would change my entire life. The assignment's premise was to create an entire dissertation on a topic of our choosing. This was the first time in school I was allowed to study something I was interested in. So, to say I was nervous is an understatement — what if I chose a topic there was not enough research on? Or what if I got bored with my topic? What would I do then? Luckily, I didn't have any of these issues. However, I was nervous about the sensitivity of my topic — nature versus nurture. Specifically, looking at the most publicized serial killers such as Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Gary Ridgway, and Aileen Wuornos. With a plethora of research on these prolific killers, I began to form my conclusion. My work agreed more so with the side of nurture. I looked at the genetic history of mental disorders associated with the genealogy of the killers and did not find enough evidence to change my prior assumption that the environment was the main cause of the creation of serial killers.

People are products of their environment. Your mannerisms and how you react to certain situations are all dependent on how you were raised to act in those circumstances. Some people are more accustomed to yelling, while others tend to shut down when being yelled at. This was essentially what my paper was about, just add in more fancy words and make it 25 pages long. Man, I loved this paper. I was not a very good writer, but that paper I loved — probably because it combined scientific research with my analysis of information.

However, this was not the end of this project; this was only half of it. Now we had to take the paper and transform it into a different kind of media, such as a magazine or podcast. I chose a magazine because I thought it was the easiest option, and that's when "Making a Murderer" was born. When I first started designing my magazine, I had no clue how to use Photoshop. I spent hours on top of hours figuring out how to use Adobe Cloud — and it paid off. To this day, I remember all the shortcuts I taught myself, and it is very helpful. Finally figuring out how to design, I began putting the spread together for the magazine. I fell in love with manipulating the elements and transforming them into something appealing to look at. That's when it switched. I wanted to be a graphic designer. This didn't feel like work to me; it was fun.

Finishing up the magazine, we printed them out, and that was that. I found my new passion. 

Coming to Ohio Northern, I was told about the Talent Award Scholarship. The submission requirement was at least a 10-piece portfolio. So, what did I do? I submitted "Making a Murderer," with about 15 pages full of original design work. I was awarded the scholarship. This only ensured me that I had chosen the right field for myself.