Deadline Approaches

"Driscoll's What Model" ( I think I particularly like this model! )

1)What: outlining the experience and what you are reflecting on.

2) So what: reflecting on the experience, and what you have learned as a result.

3) Now what: how you will use what you have learned in the future, and future practices.

1)What?

It is now almost the time to turn in my two projects and blog post for the end of Term 2.

In a sad series of unfortunate events, I accidentally spilled coffee on my laptop last week while working at the library. This depleted my working days by three days as I had it handed into the Apple store for fixing, and thankfully, dried. Unfortunately, I caught a really bad cold right after hat left me with a high fever for four days straight. I tested and was negative for covid-19. Right after, my boyfriend got sick with the same issue, and I took some time cooking food and taking care of him for the week.

These series of events discouraged me immensely, because I had a plan of what information to tackle and when to do it. We were taught to use our time management well, but one can never execpt the unexpected. Losing a week over a semi-broken laptop and bad cold was something I definitely had not thought of, but also had to simply accept and trudge on to do a good job. I felt a bit disappointed with myself for even spilling the coffee and getting sick, but I realized as I continued to work on my project, that I simply did not have time to mull over it. With each event, I decided that crying over spilled milk was no use, and continued to work as much as I could from waking up to falling asleep. I realized over time that prioritizing a project did take a toll on some aspects of my life, but also found that it was necessary to produce the amount of work that I wanted to create.

So far, I am pleased with the progress I am making, and it has been much easier to focus on the words for my document first, than to start with graphics. I decided to do a different approach this time, and focus on creating clear dialogue and arguments for my paper, before working on the visual aspects. This compromised some of the quality of my design work, but I decided that at the end, what I wanted readers to get out of my projects was the research and words.

2) So what?

Moving on from my emotions, from depleted energy, and current status of the project, I am well on my way to finishing it.

After extensive research reading online articles, Vogue, Vogue Business, Business of Fashion, etc. and reading into history and trends, I finally decided on my three luxury brands for my project. Initially, I had mulled over working on "Nike" as my second brand as it is an up and coming brand with immense growth in revenue in 2021. However, it felt like a mountain of a challenge as it is not particularly known as a "luxury" brand, and defining it into the luxury space, plus understanding the sports industry (which is a whole industry all-together to research more into) would be far too much work with the little time I had to complete my project.

So, I decided to stick to my brands, stick to writing the best words for the project, and stick to simple visuals this time. In the fashion industry, I presume that you won't get to control accidents or hiccups that may happen while preparing for a large project. Similar to real life, I didn't want to make excuses, and just accept it for how it is and continue to do what I could with the time I had. After each decision I made, things got easier, and the project flowed much more smoothly.

3) Now what?

This whole project, alongside my critical research project, has been an immense challenge. I can't really compare it or justify it in how large or how great or how little it should be. But, I knew the whole time working on it, that I wanted to do my best and be professional. I wanted to make it stand out, and I wanted to produce work that I was proud of.

Overall, I am pleased with the amount of information not just in my projects, but the amount of information I have learned from creating my projects. Learning has been the invaluable thing that has kept me inspired and growing as I worked continuously over this project. I have learned about the luxury industry, financial information of companies, brand architectures, trends, press releases, up and coming brands, and news for the future. I have learned so much about brands I care about, brands I didn't know much about, and brands that I have never heard of.

This work has not only been challenging and creative, it has been an experience in itself. For that I am extremely grateful, and although I feel a mixture of emotions reflecting on my projects one by one, I still feel like the best thing I got out of it, was learning.