Below is my first-ever creative writing piece. It also happens to be the personal statement that aided in my acceptance and scholarship into ITP (interactive telecommunications program) @ NYU, Tisch. It was a response the prompt of telling the unidentified reader who I was as a person, that the words just began to flow. They have continued to ever since..
x.
P.S. A large focus of the curriculum is documentation and keeping a blog through the two year program. I will be adding to this site weekly with course projects and other insights as they fly in.
I am a ghost. I chose a path of working in the background, and found a niche in creating a supportive environment for those who innovate. It sounds so strange when I type it out, but it’s been my reality and quite possibly my identity for the entirety of my career. So much so, that I am known as the quintessential jack-of-all-trades at a prominent technology company in Los Angeles. When the creative problem solvers get stuck, I’m brought into the conversation to challenge and provide alternative ideas. A majority of my career has been around creating spaces and programs for others; I’ve sat on the sidelines, hungry to create more; to collaborate more; to follow my gut and get lost in a project that reflects the daydreams I have visualized. I love this space. I want more of this space. I want to be light; be curious; and dream more.
I am a dreamer. I find myself often getting lost in ideas of what the future holds for technology and communications in our world. Technology, when broken down to the root of its meaning, is a utility of knowledge derived from science. We are in the information age where the majority of innovation is a reflection of the limit of our collective knowledge. The ‘how’ in regards to ingesting data or information seems to be on some syndicated rerun of what’s normal; what’s innate; what feels right. What is ‘normal’, anyways?
I am abnormal. I want to push the boundary of what is comfortable to others and live in the uncomfortable. I know that others do too. I want to be surrounded by the people who feel this way; who live and are in this world of thinking and dreaming. Playing with the idea that the past is the past, and we can change the future with new problem sets and push the boundaries of reality. I crave the moments where we can test our limits of innovation and communication; this is a challenge that I want to take head on. There is a lackluster approach to innovation; we are in a world of improving a service on top of a service and this bubble will pop. Soon.
I am bored. I find myself disinterested with what is being pushed to society as ideal and trusting. It’s so predictable at this point that innovation seems to have gone out the window; or it’s so rare that we isolate it and mass produce it. It so quickly loses the luster it once had. Where is that feeling of excitement I used to have when the new ‘i’ device would come out? I’ve come to expect that it will be faster with a few cool additions here and there; but am quickly content and over it within a few hours of use. [UPDATE: The iPhone X is really fun; but I thought that the 4th, and I have now integrated the new haptics and gestures into my daily programmed routine].
I am a critic. A passion of mine is having debates around the impact of existing and future technologies. If you want to light me up, ask me about the future of AR and how Google teased us so hard. I look back to the video for Glass and saw the future of overlaid communications pan out in that 1 second flash of the delayed service of the 6 train, with a re-route overlay to the destination. This is the future. This is where we’re headed. Not a future of being in a box with glasses on, looking at virtual worlds. We need to integrate. We need to live. We are all human and have human needs of communicating with others in our physical reality. Let’s live on a glass cliff of the existing and dive into the millennium to live like the Jetsons predicted.
I crave the future. A world where innovation becomes a part of the conversation. A constant flux in realities. A layer of existence that we are not capable of comprehending because we are not ‘there’ yet - wherever ‘there’ is. We have the opportunity to create the building blocks of the future. I could get lost for hours on the importance of what needs to be implemented in our foundation to create the playground of augmented realities where information and data are called in rather than rung up.
I want to play. I want to pull apart and trifle with these problems with others and find creative solutions to these soon to be realities. Conversations about our impending shift bring me to life and there’s so much that we can bring into the sandbox of manipulation of thought. Experimenting, stretching, and bringing to life our ideas to reality is in essence, magical.
I want to create. As a child, I was ‘The Creator’. Most of my memories from childhood span around creating programs and games for me and my friends. Memories of treasure hunts, puzzles, and labyrinth mazes flood my thoughts of my youth. I remember seeing and articulating patterns that others couldn’t visualize. I am an Experiential Architect and have made a career by creating programs and services in the workplace; these designed experiences provide the space for others to think about the greater problems in this world. I want to pivot to solving these puzzles myself, knowing that I have the ultimate understanding of what it takes to do so.
I am not just applying to graduate school; I am applying to ITP. A place where opportunities to play, experiment, and create exist for those who ask the difficult questions. An opportunity to collaborate with brilliant minds of different backgrounds is INNOVATION. I hope to have the chance to expand my realities in this environment, and welcome the future collaborations that will contribute to ideas and works that I can only imagine. ITP provides a playground where light, dreams, and curiosity are the reality - I am so ready to knock this out of the park!