There is an Indian girl in my tennis class. I'm not certain how to spell her name, but she taught me to pronounce it "nup-tee." She speaks with a strong Hindi accent and transforms into an absolute noodle when playing tennis. Her wrists and arms are all bendy and and form all sorts of unusual arcs that send the ball flying almost everywhere except for the green court space behind the net.
It sounds cruel, but sometimes it's hard not to laugh; simply because the visuals of her tennis strokes strike me as entirely comedic. It's like maybe she's actually good at tennis and just playing around to make us laugh or teach us a lesson abut how to be kind to people who are different. I've noticed fellow classmates' subtle dodges from pairing up with her for doubles.
Maybe it's cliche, but this girl is my new hero. She is persistent, sincere and never makes excuses for her ball that just flew over the fence. As someone who has herself been terrible at playing team sports, her gutsy-ness astounds me. It's something I seek to emulate.
To use a cliche that will package all of these thoughts into one blog entry, graphic design often feels like a "whole new ball game" to me.
I met with Adrian Pulfer, the head of the graphic design program at BYU, yesterday. He reviewed my portfolio to make suggestions about how to improve it before the BFA application process in August. He said this is my strongest piece. In all honesty, it frustrates me just a little bit. The whole thing is hand drawn; composed on paper. It makes me feel like a fake graphic designer, like that one piece is a genuine "Laura" that happens to overlap into the world of graphic design. He said I should redo a lot of my computer generated work and asked me to set up weekly appointments with him so that he could help me during my process; to help walk me through and offer regular feedback. A good sign, right?
May I go forward in the spirit of Nupti. I've got a lot of work to do.
