Falling Up The Stairs: My First Year In Creative Technology

The screeching of the clock, the scrambling of the hands, and the disintegration of a much-beloved prototype marks another failure under my watch. There was a crucial factor that I overlooked in the prototyping process that I have never researched before. That is the answer to "why failure." I am a junior with aspirations and ambitions, after all, but why haven't I added failure to the equation?

As I get close to finishing my second year in the creative technology department at Goodby Silverstein and Partners (GS&P), I wanted to share my transition from college to the workforce with everyone interested in creative tech and advertising. This story will be about me stumbling upwards on an infinite staircase of breaking, fixing, and learning from my failures.

The Four Stages Of Competence, a.k.a The Infinite Staircase

Four years at university did not make me an industry expert. Universities can teach technical and interpersonal skills, but they can never teach agency culture and politics. Granted, I wouldn't be working at the job I have today if it wasn't for me attending one.

During freshman orientation, an alumni gave a presentation about his journey from university to the animation industry. He mentioned the four stages of competence: unconscious incompetence, conscious incompetence, conscious competence, and unconscious competence. In simpler terms: I think I am all-knowing, I know I need improvements, I know I haven't mastered it, and I don't realize that I mastered it.

Starting university, I was at the conscious incompetence stage. I didn't know everything, and that is why I was there. By graduation time, I thought unconscious competence best fit my situation since university taught me everything I needed to know. That is wrong! I only became proficient at attending university. If I did master everything in the industry, I would have won the lifetime achievement award straight out of college.

University Years: Trying To Get A Taste Of The Industry

I studied graphic design at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), focusing on interactive design and game development. Even though I graduated recently, creative technology was a new field that just became a concentration in the university's advertising curriculum alongside art direction and copywriting. I called creative technology, "physical computing," at the time which was making hardware prototypes or interactive installations. I was studying to become something that I didn't know existed; a creative technologist.

Since creative technology is a new field, it's freshness can be a hindrance to college students. Agencies have different definitions of creative technology with different team structures, employee responsibilities, workflows, and office smells. University students can make educated guesses about what agency life is like based on what school has taught them, but all agencies are different.

In my case, GS&P Labs, the creative tech department, is a small team consisting of five highly talented members. There are other departments spread out across the agency that we collaborate with, but I was stunned by how small Labs is. A team's size can affect the types of projects they can take on regardless of skill level. I should have asked about the team dynamics during the job interview to have a better understanding of what the daily life was.

The closest thing to agency life in university was through sponsored courses. These courses team up a select group of students with real-world companies to develop a prototype the company can publicly launch. These courses were fantastic at teaching students how to collaborate with others in different fields, and I recommend taking these if offered. The downside is they are only in an academic setting, not an industry setting. Their purpose is to give you some exposure to the industry while still being in a class.

I admit that I did not know who Goodby Silverstein and Partners were until they arrived at my university looking for interns. If it wasn't for their visit, I would have never known that GS&P made the "Got Milk" campaign. I attended their agency presentation about what they focused on and their agency culture, which helped me better understand the agency and prepare for the interview. At the time, I was not familiar with famous advertising professionals and agencies, and I regret not knowing sooner. That information would have painted a better picture of job responsibilities that I could have practiced while attending university to prepare me for the job. There is nothing more embarrassing than going into a job interview, not knowing anything about them or your responsibilities.

What I learned after leaving university:

• Sponsored courses with real clients help you get acquainted with multidisciplinary collaborations.
• University can't teach agency culture and politics. Internships and junior roles will.
• Attend employer presentations for a better understanding of workplace culture and job responsibilities before interviewing.
• Don't be shy about asking questions regarding agency life, teams, and client work—fewer surprises upon starting a job.

The Intern Months: Growing Pains And Making Mistakes

Being an intern is like Bruce Willis's character in "The Sixth Sense," you don't know you're dead until the end. An internship is supposed to break the reality of everything you know before so you can ascend to the prominent role of a "junior." In hindsight, I would say I was leaving university with unconscious incompetence and became conscious incompetent during the internship. I thought I knew everything, but accepted the fact I do not at all.

To be clear, my internship at GS&P started before graduating from university. I still had another quarter left in the program, but working there would be a better learning experience. That internship left me with some hard lessons, both from inside and outside the office.

The transition to the West Coast was exciting and a thorn at the same time. I only had a backpack and a large suitcase my mom let me borrow as I moved into new living situations across the San Francisco Bay Area every month. I lived in a closet-sized bedroom, a 13-person 4-bedroom hostel, and some private rooms with their own stressors that impacted my work performance. It didn't help when the rent took up 60-75% of my take-home income—a rough lesson about budgeting when moving to one of the country's most expensive cities. My mother tried to warn me about this budgeting issue before accepting the internship and wanted me to consider not accepting the offer. I believed this offer was worth the financial risk to come.

I did have to ask for a cash advance from the agency to pay for moving expenses. This situation happened after discovering that my first paycheck would not arrive until the end of my first month. I needed to consider financial assistance for long-distance moving and should have negotiated it with the job offer. I was too excited that I overlooked it. This financial situation was not ideal and a failure on my part.

The intern benefits were in the initial offer but were not as detailed as the documents given on the first day of work. I also failed to ask for more detailed information regarding these benefits, especially regarding health insurance options. In America, hospitals are not always your friend and can leave you in financial despair for the smallest of injuries. I did opt into the high-deductible health insurance plan, which was the only option for interns. This option was better than not having insurance at all. 

Unfortunately, by the end of my internship, I was getting ill. I did not want to go to the doctor because I couldn't afford to pay the high deductible, which was about the same amount as my monthly income. I did receive a full-time offer with better health insurance around this time, so I held out for three weeks until the new insurance kicked in to be able to afford the doctor visit. The doctor diagnosed it as a severe sinus infection and provided antibiotics, but it could have been more damaging if I had waited longer.

That ordeal taught me not to overlook health insurance benefits and to prioritize them over income. I am a healthy 20-something with no pre-existing health conditions who also thinks he is invincible from illnesses and broken limbs. However, I can't imagine what would happen if an emergency occurred or if I needed life-saving medication.

Let's get back to the office. A trick I learned, later on, was that you need to be visible in the agency. If you are videotaping a prototype for a deck, physically be in the video. People will associate the actor with the product. If the video is for internal purposes, the viewer will consider the actor as the creator or the spokesperson for that idea or prototype. If you want recognition for your involvement on the project, be in that video. I have seen project takeovers just from that alone.

GS&P provides tons of activities and interest groups that employees can attend for fun and networking. Show up to these as much as possible to be more visible within the agency. Working from home makes this difficult, but online events like happy hours present opportunities for you to show your face more frequently. Today, I assist and lead agency lectures and workshops in regards to technology. These events allow me to show my face around the agency while sharing knowledge and excitement about what I love to do.

Working with new technologies can be overwhelming at times. There is no expectation for you to be an expert in something that just came out, and there will be a lot of trial and error. As an intern, I wanted to prove my worth at the agency, but having something fail repeatedly caused an unhealthy amount of stress for me. The director noticed this and pulled me aside. He told me that the agency doesn't pay me to be stressed out because I will never be at my full creative potential when stressed. It was okay to take a break and mess around. Hearing this was refreshing because I shouldn't be setting the expectations so high that it hurts me mentally and prevents my creative process from flourishing.

Before coming to the West Coast, I thought my plans were concrete and foolproof. This thought could have been a sign that I was unconsciously incompetent with my transition plan. However, I am thankful for these experiences because I would have never grown without them. Full-time employment doesn't stop that climb up the staircase of competence and failure. It just presents a new wave of learning possibilities.

What I learned during my internship:

• Create a budget before accepting a job offer, especially when relocation is involved.
• Don't be afraid to ask about financial assistance for relocating when you receive an offer. 
• Prioritize great benefits over higher income. Having proper health insurance can also determine your financial well-being.
• Be visible in the workplace. Include yourself in videos based around your prototype or idea. Also, joining agency activities will help too.
• Do not unnecessarily stress yourself out. You will never be at your full potential when stressed.

Made It To The Full-Time: Accepting Mistakes

When the full-time offer to stay on the GS&P Labs team was presented, I was ecstatic. It was relieving to find out that all the hard work as an intern pulled off. With the general theme of hiccups and failures preluding this moment, I realized that my career will always present a new set of challenges that repeat the four stages of competence. I will never be exempt from this cycle and need to show humility when starting something new.

A big thing that I had to get adjusted to is projects getting shelved frequently. In GS&P Labs, we make prototypes of concepts that Labs or creatives have made. However, lots of these prototypes have made it so close to the finish line that clients are ready to unleash them upon the unexpecting public, but they get canceled instead. All that hard work for nothing can be heartbreaking and maddening. In university, I got used to starting and finishing a project within two to three weeks. At the agency, these projects can last two to three months and never reach completion. One thing that keeps my sanity is working on my projects outside of work. It allows me to freshen up my skills and tinker with technology and art that excites me further. These personal projects also enable me to manage some of that frustration with client projects getting canceled abruptly.

The worst thing you could do with an idea or project is to make it your baby. With how frequent projects get cut, your baby will most likely fall victim to cancelation. It will hurt you emotionally more than any other idea in that situation. If you are sitting petrified about the next one getting cut, then this job may not be cut out for you. The best thing you can do is comes to terms and push forward to the next big concept as quickly as possible. Sometimes there are reasons why your baby or another project didn't make it all the way and other times, just utter silence. Reflect on what you learned during your time spent on that project. You will be able to use this knowledge on something bigger and better in the future.

Since I am working full-time, there are way more employee benefits provided to me. Sometimes it can be overwhelming, and I can get lost in them. I never had a 401k before, nor fully understood it. I made a mistake by not researching and investing in the 401k plan until several months after starting full-time. That was my ignorance, not the agency's. Life abruptly throws things at you, and there is a chance I may not get this kind of benefit for a while. If I want to retire, whenever that happens, I should be investing as soon as possible. Without revealing too much, I neglected several different benefits that I should have started sooner. My advice is to contact the appropriate people in your workplace to understand your employee benefits better. Unfortunately, not everyone gets a chance to learn this in university or high school.

Since I did not graduate from university before or during my internship, I had to take night classes while full-time in the industry. At SCAD, the recommendation is that you take two studio classes and one lecture to balance the workload. Studios are the project making classes that can be highly demanding on time, especially since my last three classes I needed to graduate were all studios. 

My time management abilities were at a boiling point and needed to be correctly applied if I wanted to have passing grades. I made a promise to myself that I should not stay up past midnight working on school projects, so I can prevent burnout from happening. From 9 AM to 5 PM was agency work, and 5 PM to 12 AM was school work. I am thankful for receiving and starting a full-time position before graduating, but I recommend reflecting on your time management abilities when it comes to taking night classes. Full-time employment and full-time university are highly demanding.

What I learned during my first year of full-time employment:

• Accept that projects may never see completion. It will happen frequently.
• Have personal projects at home to manage some of the frustrations about project cancelations.
• Never get emotionally attached to a project. You need to be able to separate your emotions from it and reflect on what you have learned because it will most likely get cut.
• Understand your employee benefits and use them. Contact the right people in the workplace to get more information.
• Consider your time management abilities and set a schedule if you plan to work full-time in the industry and take night classes. They are both highly demanding of attention and time.

Can't Stop, Won't Stop

I am only a junior in the industry and I am eager to keep progressing, but I am nowhere near retirement. This transition from college to the industry has taught me that failure is something to learn from, not prevent. Without my failures, I would have never grown. Coming out of university, I thought I knew everything when I didn't. I had to learn the hard way that I will always be cycling through the four stages of competence. I don't know everything, and I must improve because a world without failure, is a world without knowledge.