The Journey: From blackboard to moodboard

For some of my friends in the circle, they were quick enough to reach on top of the career at a very young age and they were already printing notes. I started looking at them as an example and for a moment, I felt to follow the same path. Somehow, I didn’t; because I couldn’t. My life as a lecturer was well set and I loved the way I worked, the way I lived and most importantly, the way students responded. Though I wasn’t a popular figure in the academics, I was known for what I did the best; PJs at my best.

Trying to tickle some funny bones, I always took a different path while doing something within the pedagogy. Most of my senior faculty members were surprised to see my unconventional way of completing the syllabus. It was very difficult for me to be such a strict professor because I too was once a student and I still loved to be one. Every student reminded me of things that I never did while I was a student. I still tried to maintain the minimum decorum while I was around in the campus. Beyond the class hours, I was one amongst them and they had their part of fun that included me too. Learning was always fun, and it always is.

Sometimes when I was tired of being too diligent, disciplined, I took a different route of totally discombobulating and getting poetic with time. It helped me because, not all the management practices that I taught, would get me back my college days and definitely they would not help me retrieve the faded memories. The notes written on blackboard gradually began to wipe out of my mind, and slowly I started losing grip on my profession. The strength that is a prerequisite in being such a job is, never being one amongst the students and using less of your enthusiasm in improving them. The education in some institutes has turned into business and it is no longer perceived as a holistic service. I still have my heart tugged to this part of life where I feel I can do better and I can change the perception. I feel vulnerable every time I think that I have no links in the top management and I won’t be able to take this initiative to its final stage.

I moved on to make a living for myself beyond the dream of changing the system and this was literally a creative leap of faith. I went on to pursue the job that was kind of a destiny. Being a beginner in advertising had its own pros and cons. I had to learn lots of things on-the-job which were very much different from what I already did back in MICA. It really helped to tune myself into the work that I was supposed to do henceforth. For some days, I loved the metamorphosis I was going through, but later I began to think, ‘is this what I am supposed to do throughout the day?’ The question was very lame, but the readymade three-word answer made me a believer. From being a lucid dreamer, a pun intender, my job was going haywire. Fortunately, I had resourceful and experienced guides to show me the light of day and push me beyond my limits to do my best (that was done on purpose for obvious reasons). Getting my ideas on to the virtual moodboard was necessary to prove my credibility of ideation. This time, it was me who was giving the test of creative simplicity (as I would like to put it) and I was finding it hard to pass with a minimum score. First time in my life I realized that I have so much to learn even in this field. Being creative is not enough, but being understood is.

MICA did help a lot and I went bonkers over it. That phase of my life got the creative best out of me, but this phase is squeezing every drop of my creative hemisphere in my brains, as well as my conscious. The learning in this part of life is crucial, and one thing I need to remember as a tip, as a piece of creative advise is, ‘always keep your thinking caps on’ even if you are doing horseshit work. If you don’t do, or don’t get to do anything you like, do the work that everyone like. Once you have punched your finger out of your day’s work, you are free to do things you want to do. I can very well correlate my earlier job to this one, but from a totally different perspective. I cannot teach anyone anything here, but instead I can learn anything from anyone. That is the beauty of doing a creative job because even the concrete floor can give you strong ideas. While I still look back to change the system, I want to equip myself with the right arsenal and make a bombarding entry, this time with a precisely chalked out moodboard to venerate the power of the blackboard.