One of the most important things I’m starting to figure out about MADS was the reflective side of things: doing and thinking about doing. So as part of the reflection process, here are the most important things I’ve learned in/during MADS:

• Learning is both a ton of fun and very frustrating. Fun when you’re connecting new concepts, think of new ways of doing things and can almost literally feel new pathways being formed in my brain. Frustrating when nothing seems to fall within the parameters of what I know already, when it contradicts what I know already or when it feels people are speaking a language that I haven’t mastered yet (did someone say Finance 101 in the MBA? Exactly the same feeling, everyone spoke Finance and I struggled to catch up. Learning new languages by now is not becoming easier, but I’m getting used to the process!).
• Notebooks rock. Keeping a notebook and recording the journey of my research, the ideas, thoughts, insights and disappointments has been so valuable. And imagine my delight when Steven Johnson in his latest ‘Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation‘ points to keeping a notebook as being very important for connecting ideas and creating new ones. I’m now almost surgically attached to my notebook and won’t leave the house without one. Why didn’t anyone tell me before what a joy a notebook can be? Why is it that artists and designers get taught this, but not MBA’s (or normal people)?
• Keeping an open mind is harder said than done. But so worth it when you manage it! I had to force myself to stop thinking ‘Stop it! This will never make any money! Go do something useful!’ for about the first 6 months. The idea of ‘beginner’s mind’ in Zen Buddhism is something that I’ve actively practiced during MADS and I feel that I sometimes get the hang of it.
• I am capable of more than I think I am. Or thought I ever would be. And I’m more patient than I thought I was.
• Practice. Artists and designers talk about their practice, about their craft, which is something that I hadn’t encountered before. The notion of conscious and reflective practice, improving from where you were yesterday, building on thoughts and learning from them (and this is where the notebook comes in handy), and failing as part of the process, rather than just getting a grade* and moving on was really an eye opener.

* full disclosure: I don’t know any of my grades yet. But I know I passed the course. Hurrah!

I’m getting close to the end of the beginning. In autumn 2007, after having finished an MBA earlier that year, and started a job in a small brand consultancy where I worked very closely with a team of (very good and very patient!) designers, I decided I wanted to find out more about the design process and I searched around for courses and settled on a part-time MA in Design Studies at Central St Martin’s starting in Jan 08.

Now, almost 3 years later (I had to take a year out due to personal reasons), I’m about to finish. This weekend I’ll be installing my final exhibition, along with 62 classmates, and that’s that. The end of the MADS degree, the end of a whole new beginning, a whole new set of experiences and ways of looking at the world and solving problems. And man, have I struggled at times, since a lot of what I was pushed to do (and was pushing myself to do) was so far beyond what I had done before or what I had grown comfortable with. More reflection and lessons learned to follow in future posts but for now I just wanted to mark this moment of almost-being-done. And to mark the end of a formal beginning (but only the very first baby steps as a designer).

Looking back over my course handbook, I was struck by this passage

‘This interplay between ‘responsible economic’ and ‘responsible social’ contribution summarises one of the key agendas that is at the heart of the MA Design Studies…. serious research, soul-searching questions and the application of your imagination are the stuff of our version of productive change – not the production of empty style.’

Keep fingers crossed for me that all goes well!