And if you look at your reflection, is it all you want to be?

Some days I feel like I lose a little piece of myself while I'm at work. Except for a few random little conversations throughout the day and lunch hour, I bury my personality and delve into the mile high stack of loans that I need to work on.
Then I tell myself that this is only temporary, and that hopefully one day I will be able to have a job that I can love and that showcases my thoughts, ideas, emotions. You know, pretty much why I'm in school to be a lighting designer.

Every time somebody asks me why I've gone into what I did, I always say something to the effect of "It's a lot of work, but it's a lot of fun." And that's essentially what it is in a nutshell. But I used to try to explain the overwhelmingly huge amount of work and time that it takes, and why it is so rewarding at the end, and also how you have to say goodbye to it. Striking your show at the end is hard, and this job that I want so badly isn't for the faint of heart. I just sit back and tell myself that nothing lasts forever, and that while it lasted, it was wonderful, meaningful, beautiful. In that way, my work mirrors life.

Also you will always have the pictures from photocall to look back on in your portfolio.

Sadly I do not have a lot of photocall pictures from Millikin. The work I did there didn't exactly have an end product all of the time, and usually it was rushed because of the deadline, and I wasn't proud of it in the end. I had always just wished for more time.

I'm really looking forward to designing this coming semester at Columbia. After this semester, I will know for sure.

I'll know.