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Birth: An Experience Too Great and Memorable to Forget

S-R 27 April 2009 Career & Work, School & Study 30 views One Comment  Print This Post

The Birth Logo

“Birth” - it’s only held once a year, making it extra special. What makes it so special and full of mysteries? Well, hold on right there and allow me to unveil the secret! It’s the one event that happens only once (or perhaps not at all in most cases) in every design student’s lifetime. It’s the time when ALL graduating students from the same school join forces to organize their very first exhibition showcase that is opened to the public, the industry people, and most importantly, their family and friends to feel proud of what they have done over the past 3 years of course study.

By now you’re probably wondering what all of this has got to do with the term “Birth”… right? Well, as one of the many graduating students, I would like to proudly present to you why Birth is so meaningful to us. Birth means giving life to a newborn. And that’s what our theme is about – giving life to new creations beyond boundaries and possibilities… with our designs, imaginations, ideas and creativity.

Let me share with you my very own experiences of Birth. The Pre-production stage, also known as the Pre-graduation woes, was the most dreadful, if not, most taxing experience of all. Countless sleepless nights with overloads of caffeine, countering migraines on the left and right, aching neck and shoulders, braving tight and crazy deadlines… All of this for the sole purpose of making the graduation showcase a smooth-going process… Well, hopefully.

Next up, is the Production stage, in other words, getting everything ready and re-organized, contacting printing shops and sending everyone’s works over for mass-printing. But before that, everything has to be in the right shape, or else some poor guy has to pay for the extra printing cost because of a silly mistake one of the students forgot to check, which in turn delayed the whole process.

While it may seem like a very tedious process, it’s actually very simple. You just have to follow the steps carefully… but if you’re one of those people who don’t read instructions and just follow other people blindly, you’re more likely to get whirled up in the mess of having to re-do your part. And if time doesn’t allow it, you either have to send your work for printing yourself or have the managing committee do it for you… where the end-product is usually not what you wanted.

The Stage

So after the production stage, what’s next? Well… of course! How could I have forgotten about the most crucial part of the whole process? The Post-production stage! Not so creative, am I? Anyway, this is the most exciting part of the whole preparation process – gathering yourself at the venue of the exhibition at 6am in the morning; meaning you most likely don’t get any sleep the night before. Usually at such an early hour, the public transports like the trains or buses have yet to start operating. So, many students either take the cab or get their parents to drive them down. It was quite a dreadful morning for us. Everyone felt as if they had been dragged out of their comfy beds unwillingly and the worst thing that could happen? At least half of the cohort hadn’t arrived yet and we had to wait for them for a good whole hour. In the end, we got called in by the lecturers, who were there even earlier than us, to gather at the exhibition area.

Right after a short briefing, the works that had to be shipped were now there! By works, I mean A0 size display panels. So, time to get our bums moving - picking up our own panels. Fortunately it wasn’t as heavy as I thought, in fact, it was very light! Our first hands-on experience in setting our booths up – deciding where each panel should be positioned (I myself had to decide for my other teammates as well since they were missing in action), clipping our panels together, tying the strings and finally getting set on hanging the panels up, with the flashing spotlights constantly blinding our eyes. BUT… it wasn’t over yet. On top of hanging panels up, we had to ensure that everything was in the right order. And finally, picking up the shirts that we pre-ordered.

While waiting patiently for the other group to arrive, we took some time to get ourselves pumped up for the opening. If you think that setting up our booths was all that we needed to do… you’re wrong. We still needed to make sure that we were presentable, and to add on to that, we needed to man our booths – tackling members of the public while they bombarded us with question after question!

Graduates' Works

So what did we do for the three days? Let me sum it all up for you: Showcasing our works on laptops, panels, and in a physical hard-cover portfolio; entertaining kids and teenagers who have dreams of becoming the next aspiring designers; giving parents an idea what we do exactly, hoping to change their perspectives of things; doing our best to present ourselves to future job employers who were on the look-out for great potentials.

It’s such an irony that this marked the end of our years here. But has it really ended? Maybe there’s a hidden meaning behind “Birth” - while the graduation showcase marked the end of our 3-year journey here, it doesn’t mean our journey has really ended. It indicates the start of another journey down the road, into the future. What awaits us in this future are numerous possibilities and goals. One may feel nostalgic about leaving the three years of memories behind, but what’s more important is perhaps the future that lies ahead. You may forget all the horrible incidents that happened back then and continue to move on with life, but you cannot forget the great friends that you have made there and the life lessons you have learned.

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