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Since my adolescent time, I have had an inside joke with my mother. Every time the other didn’t know a person or fact that we were talking about we said, in the most sarcastic voice ever (almost Paula Bobone like): “my god, illiterate!” and we would laugh out loud.
To give you some context about our background, my mother took literature as a high school student and I took visual arts. She read as a hobby and I painted and watched films (and read too but not as much… I mean that woman is a machine. She read 2 books a month with 2 kids and a house to take care!) So our worlds were a bit apart.
But since then I felt dumb almost every day of my 23-year-old life, and it’s been amazing! By dumb I don’t suggest the negative stereotypical “stupid”. I mean having an “aaaaaahhhh so that’s why” moment, a eureka moment or an “I have never even heard of that” situation.
This dumbness is the best thing you can have in life. It’s a sign of progress and learning and that you are surrounded by people who can push you to be better, smarter and to be more open. The people who make you feel this kind of dumb are the ones who you share your day or a coffee, and break your bubble of comfort.
I seek this feeling of dumbness and try to act on it. It’s my curious side that guided my life to where I am now professionally.
I started college with a degree in Audiovisuals and Multimedia, where I discovered Photography, cinematography (which I already loved but didn’t know much), Design and Web Design, Motion graphics, and much, much more… but I learn a bit of marketing too. In paperwork and projects, I looked more and more at how design and marketing were connected. So once I graduated, I applied to a degree in Marketing and Publicity and started working in Angry Ventures as a designer, Web designer and Marketing trainee.
At that point, I started to understand that I could only fully understand why the type X of marketing worked in type X of design, with understanding psychology and sometimes physiology. So I learned at home watching youtube videos, some of them by Stanford University (Lecture Collection | Human Behavioral Biology).
With more information, the more I understand that I knew nothing, worse than John Snow by far. And the basics of human interaction were so simple and complicated at the same time that fascinated me. So I became a marketing accounting manager and later (by necessity also) a project manager. And right now I’m looking into the User Experience (UX) world and cinematography.
I was lucky enough to have my mother as a partner in this journey of discovery. Although I’m a 23-year-old (“almost adult”) and she’s a real adult with 55, we surprise and challenge each other.
In a nutshell, the thing I most encourage you to do is: ask why and in what way. If a person saw a movie and recommended it to you, inquire them why it was good and in what way.
Look for ways to pop your safe bubble of knowledge. It can be as simple as a Youtube video, Netflix doc or a blog post. Make yourself feel dumb, and act on it.
Heres some places easy to go to feel dumb (on Youtube):
- Vsauce – Mike talks about every theme possible to your imagination. He has a series called Mindhunter in his channel with quality far superior to the norm.
- CrashCourse – Imagine all the classes/books/docs and so on, which were so boring that you cannot let your mind around the information. This channel gives you in video form and in the most entertaining way.
- Now you see it – Video Essays about audiovisuals, cinema and performance.
- Russel Brand – Mindfulness and lifestyle discussions
- Smarter every day – He’s an engineer by day, a dad of 5 by night and a Youtuber at the weekends, that asks how the world works around him.
- TED ED & TED TALKS
- The Art assignment – Video Essays about art-related things
- Wireless Philosophy – Video Essays about philosophy
#Designer #WebDesigner #DigitalMarketer #PlantLady #ShockinglyBadAtFrench
