re[fresh]

So this past week has been a roller coaster of emotions. I needed sometime to refresh and regroup. So Friday night, I spend with Adobe Illustrator and some good music to clear my mind. Nothing more in this world brings me more happiness then opening up a clean artboard (while maybe my family, the gospel and crystal light). Friday night threw me right back to endless nights in room 210 working on the re[design] edition of the yearbook. OOO...How I love yearbook. Everything important that I learned in High School I learned in yearbook. Ms. V is my mentor. She has always pushed me to be better. To learn new techniques. Letting me make mistakes before she would step in to fix them. Giving me the reigns to run my staff as I wish and giving me complete design freedom. I'm so grateful for the love and support that she has shown me though out the last seven years that I have known her. We started off at Troy High School together. I was an awkward freshmen in her English class, she was a new graduate of UMich with a passion for teaching and English. When I walked into her classroom on the first day of my second semester, little did I know how much my life would be changed upside down. Through out the semester I was exposed to the life of a Yearbook student. I want to do it. Ms. V encouraged me to apply. I did and got in. WAHOOO! Back then, little did I know how much that decision would shape the rest of my life. The next three years I completely fell in love with designing and photography. I learned how to use InDesign, shop action midway through with a SLR, write an AP article, how to lead a group and organizational skills. These skill has stuck with me and influenced my career choice. I remember after my first semester at BYU, I went to talk to Ms. V. I was trying to determine what to major in. She calmly reminded me of my love for design and talents that I had. Again, she encouraged me apply to the Advertising program. As I was in the process of applying I was so grateful that I knew how to write in an active voice and how to make a photo transparent in InDesign. And to my surprise, I got in! I know that without yearbook, I wouldn't have applied and completely fallen in love with it. Now as I'm applying to the Art Director program, I again fall back to the skills that I learned from Ms. V. She didn't only teach me design. She always pushed me. She taught me about life. How to talk about difficult situations, how to handle disagreements, how to lead and how to compromise. Ms. V...thank you for everything you taught me. I'm so grateful that you accepted a dorky 13 year old to be a staffer for the Gladiator.