I chose what I wanted to become
hello everyone
i’m really excited and honored to be
given this opportunity
uh i’m gonna be talking about the three
main reasons that i’m standing in front
of you here today
now these are some special extraordinary
reasons
but really simple ones which stay into
my life
the first one is i found something that
i’m passionate about
my personal motto is try everything
and now about eighty percent of you are
gonna stop listening to me because i’m
about to call the movie tears in the
uh in this movie was
he talks about the process of buying a
chair he says that before buying a chair
you
sit in all of them you try them out you
see if you’re comfortable
uh if not you move on to the next one
and only after this
you actually end up buying one but he
was using this as a metaphor for
relationships
but isn’t that true for everything so
when i was a kid like growing up i took
a lot of hobby classes
swimming karate painting rangoli you
name it
i was like oh enthusiastic hypocrite you
would see
everywhere the annoying kind but had
everyone tried
everything out i don’t think i would
have discovered that i actually like
arts i like listening
graduated from the national institute of
design in the
it’s a design school and on an average
we spend about 12 to 14 hours a day
doing assignments working and that it is
a lot
but i really enjoy what i do
and because of this work did not feel
like work
um to be really honest with you
had i be doing anything else anything
else
i would not have been able to give the
same amount of time
dedication or patience to my work
and you know how time just flies by when
you’re doing something that you really
like
it could be playing basketball for you
or reading a novel that is
exactly the feeling that i’m talking
about
now i’m gonna move on to the next reason
supportive
indian parents so this right here is a
pretty rare phenomenon like i know
but i was really lucky to have parents
who
uh supported me in the decision of
picking an unconventional career option
it was a very big deal for me because
right from childhood i’m usually used to
seeing them like
this oh okay this
this i mean all of you probably relate
to this mode
because like all through childhood i
would just keep
testing them and like no no no and
even when okay before i speak about this
you must be wondering hey in the intro
he said she’s an award-winning graphic
designer
surely her drawing can be better than
this so
so that’s the thing about design it’s
different from arts it’s different from
drawing
design is considered successful when you
can
actively solve a problem or a need or
you can simply just communicate
something
design spans across not just products
but across spaces
across systems or even thought processes
so
there’s a particular quote from college
that has stayed from me
stayed with me till now it says design
is invisible until it fails it means
that a design is successful
it should be so effortless it should
blend right in
the user never even notices it until
there’s a problem of some sort so in our
day-to-day lives we come across a lot of
things
[Music]
yeah so we come across a lot of things
and we take a lot of things for granted
like sign words
until there’s a disruption of some sort
which forces us to think away
from my usual train of thought and that
that’s literally food for thought for
you
so this is what like design in simple
terms is what i can explain to you it’s
a lot of things
and i would probably just stand here and
talk for like
a full day about design but to break it
down in a separate terms
so coming back to the point about um
support from parents and from society
back in 11th grade when i told them uh i
want to opt for design
it’s like a big moment and so their
first reaction was um
okay it’s like a hobby thing you can
take it on the side you can prep for
engineering and this can
just go on so after a lot of haggling
a lot of discussions with them a lot of
arguments
we finally came to a decision okay you
can pursue it you can prep for it
there are some rules you have to take
signs in your 11th and 12th
and you have to score 80 percent on your
boats a minimum of 80 percent
so now they were setting these rules
because they thought
it should there should be like a
fail-proof option in case like something
was wrong with this plan
but slowly over time they saw me working
hard with sincerity and dedication that
i was actually interested in this
and they came around i mean my parents
started driving me more than like you
know they were more interested in it at
some point
uh than me they were driving me to and
flow from classes my mom was
hunting down alumni from colleges that i
was applying to so that i could talk to
them
and but the funniest one and the most
important one
um i was really happy that they took my
side
when you know a random relative would
come up and say design
fashion design
so despite all this times are definitely
changing it’s 2020.
uh you see a lot of unconventional
career options coming up like who would
have thought 10 years ago that
being a social media influencer can be a
full-time job
right um but the real gap is not
because of the lack of awareness or the
constraints laid down by the society
it’s the industry um an interviewer
recently asked me a question
uh she said um why do you think that
people will focus on better paying jobs
more than skill-based rules now the
answer was really spontaneous sounds
like everybody works for a living right
i mean everybody has to earn money and
if there are better opportunities for
people
to earn their livelihood through what
they do best through things that they
are passionate about that they’ll
actually love working to do there would
be a
major turnaround in the industry and
i’ll move on to the last point
i kept going on now six months ago i
represented india
at a global platform i competed amongst
40 of the best graphic designers from
the country who was
also selected to represent their country
and proudly came back home with the
bronze medal
but before this thank you so much but
before this glorious moment like this
special moment of my life there were
multiple failures
preparations sleepless nights a lot of
anxious moments where you know i was
even doubting my ability to make it to
the selection grounds within india
so what i’m trying to say is i’m just a
regular kid
just like you you or anyone else in this
room
i overthink i get nervous i’m lazy
i procrastinate a lot i was
considering saying no to doing this talk
because it seemed like a lot of effort
and but what really helps me personally
is taking things step by step
but my steps are usually like this
so but to on a serious note um
taking things one day at a time taking
things uh
things one step at a time really helps
you give a sense of
like gives you a sense of accomplishment
so if i take
one thing at a time i’ll get that
encouragement to take one step forward
and you like instead of focusing on the
bigger picture which is usually what
people tell you to do focus on the
bigger picture
what really helps me is calm down take
it one day at a time i’m gonna do this
one thing
next and then i’m gonna move on because
i completed it so here i am
i’ve taken you through my talk and i’ve
completed this
one more little step and if i can stand
here
do this today and like with all the
publishings whatever
so can each one of you thank you so much