When I was younger I worried about the implications of having a Bachelors of Fine Arts degree versus a Bachelor of Science. Would I be pigeoned-holed into being a designer all my life? Were countless beatings at the hands of mindless Account Exec's to become par for the course? As strange as those worries seem now, they were grounded in the reality of my situation. Partly a combination of time and location, my vision was impeded by colleagues, friends and bosses. I have been in New York for six years now and have grown beyond even my own ideas. Mostly thanks to my BFA because without it I would have not been able to continuously assess, adapt and adopt to every situation.

1. Assess - In art school, we learned to begin all our projects by using your artistic sensibility to assess the overall picture and begin to visualize different solutions both process and creative oriented. By taking a creative top-level strategic look at our problems we began to form a different type of process. In sharp contrast to regular schools where you learn to only focus on one solution to most problems we learned solutions are only limited by the mind's capacity to develop them.
2. Adapt - Being made to constantly switch applications and learn new technologies at a sometimes dizzying pace was perfect primer for the internet age. HTML, drawing and reading formed the backbone of studies and we constantly were sharpening our abilities to adapt. I have met many MBA's stuck on process and unable to see big picture changes coming.
3. Adopt - Sometimes in the name of good design and other times not so good design, we were experimenting with new technologies and adopting it as part of our visual solutions. Being early adopters then made it easier to learn to fit technology to solution instead of solution to technology.

In the current economy, value is placed on creativity, problem-solving and being able to set oneself apart from a crowded field of potential. My BFA has armed me with all the tools to do this and more. I am almost ten years out of school now and can finally say that I made the right choice pursuing my degree in Visual Communications.