The Calm Before the Storm

I have settled in to the pace of my new world of school now and am finding the transition between my former career and this life as a pre-nursing student challenging on some fronts, and refreshing at the same time.

The main challenge so far has just been the major gear shift I have had to make from an entirely creatively-focused industry to maths and sciences. For 15 years my world has been about design, which is entirely subjective. And as an Art Director, I directed that flow and spoke in terms like "the color needs to be a little warmer," or "I'd like to see a bit more contrast" or "how do these elements reinforce the client's brand message?" Good creatives excel at taking the subjective and applying some kind of rationale behind the design decisions they make in order to sell the work to a client.

None of that is going to fly where I'm going.

Now everything is either right or wrong. It's all linear (at least so far) -- and getting the decimal in the wrong place means you calculated the wrong dose, which could have dire consequences for your patient. The things I do now can be repeated, verified, tested. My creative friends who are reading this now are likely getting a little itchy. Designers don't like borders and strict definitions. They like to color between the lines. The thing is, I have always been a hybrid -- the daughter of an engineer and an artist, I'm pretty balanced between the linear thinking and creative/imaginative worlds. I can play in both paddling pools quite happily. So, the logic of what I'm studying now is new, exciting, and for once -- there is only one answer...the right answer.

That's kind of comforting for someone who has been having to defend the reason why something is more greenish-blue and less purple.

However, my brain is a little slow to make the switch. I have been joking with friends that for 15 years I have been feeding and watering the creative side of my brain, and letting the linear side atrophy and wither. Now I have turned on the fire-hose of information from my math and science classes, just pumping that under-fed side of my brain full of data points. And it has looked at me, raised it's eyebrows and said, "Screw you! You starved me for 15 long years and now you just expect me to carry you to the finish line?!" So now I'm busy giving the linear side of my brain a pep-talk. And we have decided to use this quarter as our warm-up.

Easy does it, linear me -- it's gonna be a marathon, not a sprint.