Sabreet Dhillon
ACH 102: Digital Dreams
May 6, 2008

During one of our class periods, the senior vice president of weather.com, Matthew de Ganon, came to speak to us about the opportunities and the lifestyles involved in the world of digital art. His discussion mainly included what exactly he had to accomplish during each project that he oversees and how a team of professionals go about in doing performing these various tasks. Despite the fact that a majority of the information he presented was very technical in detail and focused mainly on specific roles, I did learn a lot from this presentation.  

The fact that Mr. de Ganon informed us that he had originally been an actor caught my interest right away. I have always respected people who take the risk of doing something that he or she will enjoy, even if there is no guarantee of success. I could immediately tell that he would not be involved in the digital media business if he did not really enjoy what he was doing. Noticing a simple fact like that could possibly be more influential than someone actually explaining his or her job. In my opinion, it definitely was.  

Quite frankly, while he was speaking, I was really bored. The fact that he was trying to perhaps influence us into picking this as a career line probably made me judge him on a harder scale. I am not sure if this is exactly what the intention of the presentation was supposed to be, but I assumed that this was the situation because of how he was introduced. Although he seemed to love his job, figuring out how to layout a website does not exactly capture my interest. Making posters, creating flyers, and designing more temporary, yet still tangible, pieces of art interest me a lot more than designing a website. From this discussion, I was really able to learn that although, the most financially successful path in any sort of digital design would be to jump on the bandwagon of new trends on developing ideas like the internet and personal websites, it is best to do exactly what you enjoy doing, instead of picking a career path solely because you feel that it may make you a lot of money, or because its something that your parents expect of you.

I am not exactly sure, but I assume that most students are faced with some sort of pressure to pick a career line that is secure, stable and respectable. Personally, my parents would never approve of me choosing photography as my career path, unless of course, I could come up with some sort of plan that was completely foolproof of my success. I feel that a lot of people view art students in a negative way, because they are considered to be impractical. Many people go as far to say that they must be bad at everything else and therefore, art is the only career option they have in the world. It’s really sad that this is the common belief about art that most people hold, but it cannot exactly be denied or ignored. Being an artist is not considered to be a wise choice. The fact that it is a competitive field that holds no guarantee of success or even a guarantee of having a job is why people feel this way about it. I don’t know what I personally want to do with my life, but as wrong as I do see this ideology to be, I can understand the basis of it, which does make me question my personal desires and choices. I hope that I can find a balance between picking a career path that I enjoy, and one that will keep me off the streets. The most important thing that I learned during Mr. de Ganon’s presentation is that in the end, you are going to be doing something for years and years to come, so its just logical to pick something you personally enjoy, and even if you end up in a tough situation as he did, there will never be a time in your life that you will be so hopeless that you cannot make a choice and pave a new way for yourself.