“That’s Your Major..?”
People tend to have a particular conception of a design major. The people that are in the field tend to recognize the difficulty design brings onto the designers and how complex the process of creating a single design is. The people that are not in the field assume that designing, in general, is simple and easier than studying for the stem. It is frustrating to deal with these misconceptions because they are just making assumptions before ever being in the shoes of a designer. Whenever someone in high school would ask what major I am enrolling in college with and I tell them it is “Design”, they will say that it was probably easier for me to get in compared to other majors. Even when I never said anything about their majors, they wouldn’t think twice before stating those statements.
When my acquaintance from high school reacted to my major that way, I felt miserable. I felt underappreciated for the amount of effort I poured into creating my portfolio. I started to question if their assumptions were really the case. I even considered switching majors due to these assumptions. They did not even try to change up some of the words to their reactions in the possibility of hurting my feelings. This moment in time was when I did not register the full meaning behind the creating process of design. Basically, I would have the misconceptions that others had in the back of my mind because I knew that it was not an academic major.
I don’t blame them for thinking in a downgrading way because I did not have the strong foundations to fight for what I knew was right and let them know that they are wrong. After starting college and learning more and more about what design is, all the negative thoughts that I had towards it disappeared. I don’t feel miserable when someone tells me that my major was an “easy way in”. When this happens, I just gained an opportunity to explain how you should not be saying that to anyone and the impacts that design is probably making in their life at the moment. Now that I have a personal value with what design is, I have the capabilities to let them know that they are completely off and that no one should compare each other’s major because each one has their own struggles that the ones not in the field will not understand.
