I am a senior interior design student at a design college. My school is pretty
lax. I remember when I first started school; everyone got dressed up for
presentations, everything was prepared and ready, and it felt like a career
environment. But as the time has gone on I’ve noticed the professionalism begin
to fade. Students stopped dressing up, people attack others work, they come in
with their projects unfinished, and an overall catty behavior.
I remember during my second quarter, Florida fought and
won to keep interior design regulated. IIDA and ASID had a regulation
celebration on my campus. There were senators, presidents from IIDA and ASID
chapters, professional interior designers and architects, and students from
around the area were invited. With all these influential people around most students
were dressed up and on their best behavior. But there was one girl who looked
like she just walked off the set of a rap video. Although she had no shame, she
was representing interior design students everywhere in the most embarrassing
way. She fed into the whole
if-your-a-women-lacking-skills-be-an-interior-decorator stereotype that I and
my fellow students fight against.
When
it comes to behavior, instead of encouraging one another to do their best, they
tear each other down. I used to see my school
like a haven for interior design education but it seems along the way we forgot
what we are really there for and just focus on what others are doing. Students
have lost sight of the fact that we are here to better ourselves not make
ourselves look better by bringing others down.
I,
too, have been guilty of not finishing a project on time. We have 11 weeks and
life happens. But to show up to finals with absolutely nothing is just
disrespectful. It shows how much they really value their education and the time
of their instructors and fellow students. In the real world, they would be
fired but in the safety of a for-profit school, as long as they have the money
they can keep coming back.
I
believe we need a refresher on professionalism in design education. We need to
better prepare ourselves for life after graduation. The students that have
graduated before me set the ground work for how employers see
fresh-out-of-college graduates. Let’s bring professionalism back to our design
schools.
