Cleaning out my inbox tonight - deleting messages as far back as 2002. I found this little something I wrote in 2004 and thought I would post it.
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"$7,000 for a Future"
It was a Tuesday in the spring of 2000. I was 25 and my life was at a standstill. I was tired of being a receptionist, working at temporary jobs answering phones, filing, and sorting mail. I was looking in the classifieds for a new job when a large square ad at the top of the page caught my eye. The ad was for Platt College, a design school in Newport Beach. The wheels in my head started to turn.
I wanted a creative job, something more fulfilling than office work. I wanted to eventually work for a magazine, and going into graphic design could be a back door into writing, I summized. I called right away and made a 1 p.m. appointment that day to visit an admissions counselor.
The recruiter was perfect for her job. She was a personable, upbeat lady - the type of person you want go to lunch with and chat with, in hopes you'll catch whatever it is she's got. After talking with her and taking a tour of the school, I decided going to Platt was the right next step in my life, and I signed up for the one-year program on the spot, and then signed papers for about $7,000 worth of loans.
Classes were held from 6-10 p.m. Monday through Thursday. At the first meeting, we got our art kits: a tackle box-looking bin filled with graphic arts pencils, tools, erasers, markers, and other tools. It felt like the first day of kindergarten... It was great.
Pinned up above the chalk boards in the front of the room was student artwork - great art work that was both inspiring and intimidating. I hoped I could rise to the challenge. I am not a natural artist, but I wanted to create the art projects I saw when I closed my eyes. I hoped I could.
My first semester was with graphic artist Tony Colombini, the principal of Corner, a design firm in Costa Mesa. His teaching style was like comedy traffic school - very laid back and personable, with a goofy yet entertaining sense of humor and an endearing laugh. He brought the world of graphic arts alive and within our grasp - form and color and perspective. We all worked diligently hunched over our green design tables, tracing, drawing, coloring or stipling (creating images with dots).
The room was filled with 25 or students. I remember most of the faces, it's names I don't remember. Many left or were ahead of us, but there was a core group of us - seven or so of us who started together and became a little group.
During our nightly 30-minute break, we would stroll over to the nearby Deitrich's for coffee, and sit around at the outside tables and talk. What we talked about I can't remember - movies, music, life - whatever. I loved it. It was the first time I belonged to anything like that in a long time. I didn't have to struggle or try. It was a nice feeling. If break had started and I was lagging, they waited for me. I was so used to just being left behind. But they didn't leave. They waited.
We were an interesting, diverse bunch - a group brought together by our desire to create art, and brought together outside of it by our different personalities that all just seemed to click somehow.
Sitting around the two black rod iron tables dragged from their places to be closer together, there's Yen, a designer best known in class for his simple, chic monocolor designs. He is now a designer at the Cannery firm in the heart of Hollywood, at a building next to the El Capitan Theatre at Hollywood and Vine, and making mega-bucks. He wears funky looking Nike's and loves pug dogs. He recently got married to his long time girlfriend, Tess.
And there's Matt, a student whose work I don't remember, but who was and is a friend, who flirted relentless with me until the last time I talked to him before I got married. We are friends again, see each other now and then.
And ah, Nate, a tattooed bad boy slightly younger than me, who had the whole rock-a-billy thing going on, drove a hot classic car, had a longtime on-again off-again girlfriend (a black-haired, red-lipped beauty), and played upright bass in a band. He talked openly about how much he loved sex, and while at school got a job at a porn store. Red flags waved wildly all around him, but he gave this (then virgin) girl a hot, fluttery feeling, and I flirted with the thought, that if the chance ever presented itself, he could me take over to the dark side with him, if only for a moment.
Joel was a professional skater, a nice clean-cut guy who drove from San Clemente where he lived with his cute but air-headed girlfriend to Newport Beach every night so he could one day be a designer for a skateboarding magazine.
And Kelly, a girl with short black-bobbed hair, who had a hard edge that turned me off at first.I thought she was harsh, boorish, rude. But to get to know her, she was a caring person, a gentle personality with a heartfelt laugh. She was beautiful, with china doll skin and makeup to match, and always looked neat and fashionable, even if was wearing a t-shirt, jeans and converse. You knows those types? I don't know how they do it. I am the type who without fail has a stain on my shirt by lunch.
Kelly, who was about 30 then, had recently graduated accounting school, and decided crunching numbers was much too dry. While going to Platt, she worked as a human resources assistant at an internet certification company in Santa Ana called Prosoft Training.
She met a guy on-line and fell in love. The second time they saw each other, they married at a drive-thru chapel in Vegas. Crazy kids. She quit Platt to join her new husband but before she left, she referred me for her job at human resources assistant.I interviewed with her boss, Anna, who I instantly thought was terrific, and got the job - with full benefits and making the most I had ever made in my life!
But I didn't see Platt to the end -- I left just a few weeks shy of graduating. I realized that while I loved art, someone else needed to create it. And after realizing this, I just couldn't endure the schedule anymore. I wanted to write out all of my ideas, and the computer programs didn't stick in my brain as well as I hoped. Yen, who was a natural, had to tutor me so I could move on to the last semester. It was a difficult and costly decision - $7,000 down the drain I thought. But the hardest part was saying goodbye to the break bunch.
Right before I left school, I started a copywriting internship for Tony, and from there met his creative coach, RaShelle Westcott, and started writing for her, bartering coaching for writing. She helped me learn to write down my goals and not be afraid to ask for what I want. I continued to take on writing jobs with other designers, making pennies but gaining valuable experience and a portfolio of writing samples.
Fast-forward about two and a half years...
Prosoft is close to closing its doors. I'd be getting laid off soon but couldn't bear getting yet
another job where I'm not writing.
Providence steps in - in the form of a mass e-mail sent to Prosoft folks. On the list of e-mail addresses, I noticed that a laid-off Prosoft employee, an editor named Tom Graves, had an Orange County Register e-mail address. I emailed Tom and told him how jealous I was he worked at the Register. What a dream come true that would be, I told him.
A few weeks later, he emailed me about a news assistant position that was open at the Fountain Valley bureau. I applied, faxed my writing samples to editor Iris Yokoi, and was hired several weeks later - over the phone!
Two other news assistants had been hired, but for whatever reason, couldn't take the job. That's because it was meant to be mine. I worked part-time at the Register and part-time at Prosoft until I was laid off from there in October, 2003. (I'm writing for about four community papers - and it's so amazing to see my work in print!)
At the time I started my job at the Register, I had been married for one month and had an 11-month old son, Nathan. Several months later, Kelly got pregnant and then separated from her husband who didn't want to be a father. We were friends again - in the same place in our lives, so different than when we had met at school. We talk about being a mom and help each other through things. Her son is now one. Nathan is almost two, and we are so excited that they can play and be friends.
I look back on the crazy day when I randomly picked up the paper and impulsively signed up for design school. I am still paying off $7,000 worth of loans and couldn't design anything if my life depended on it. But I look at where that experience has brought me, and all the people I met through it. It makes it all worth it.
And I realized that while it may take a while to see the purpose in some things, nothing in life happens by accident.
Everything happens for a reason. Everything has its purpose. And that is beautiful.
