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The Student Life an ongoing journal by Donald Lehman |
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September 30, 2002  by Donald Lehman School is off the ground and flying by at 500 mph. Making the transition from working at an internship to getting back in to the flow of college has an added element this year, helping run RIT’s IDSA chapter. (For those of you that don’t know, IDSA stands for the Industrial Designer Society of America.) RITidsa is run by the Consulate of Super Friends: Liz, Ori, Sam and myself. Together, we are out to change the world and have the occasional guest speaker with Q&A sessions. Needless to say we are gun-ho. Our 12 points of light for progress include: > Organizing portfolio review days with professional designers to prepare students for getting internships and jobs. > Hosting a professional lecturer series with real life designers. > Organizing trips to various design shows such as ICFF and the Detroit Auto Show. Blah, blah, blah. Trust me, there is more and it’s all nothing short of brilliance. At least it was until we found some old meeting logs of past RITidsa groups. Included in the ideas mentioned were portfolio review days, having a professional lecturer series, and trips to shows such as ICFF and the Detroit Auto Show. So it seems everyone else had the same brilliant ideas. But none of these ideas had ever come to pass. Talking to our resident shop technician (Rick Auburn, a real superhero) revealed that like us, all these past IDSA groups started out gung-ho with big ideas. That is until life got in the way. Oh man it’s the beginning of a horrible Top 10 country song. But seriously, after you factor in school, jobs, significant others, parties and other miscellaneous, IDSA just starts sounding like background noise. We had to start doing something productive immediately to commit ourselves to actually getting these ideas to pass. Not only that, we had to convince other ID students that might actually consider joining IDSA that this year is going to be more than just one or two pointless meetings about nothing. It seems you can’t have an IDSA student chapter without the students. So what are we actually doing about it? Well we tried to start out by accomplishing a few small things. First we put up an info board in a common area so people can actually see some visible evidence that we exist as a group. It’s in an area people use a lot (right in front of the bathrooms and the water fountain) so hopefully they will stop and find out what’s going on. (Side note: Funny how when you write down events on a public calendar it means that you have to actually follow through with them.) We also had a small “Welcome to ID” thing for the freshmen. Remember when you were a freshman in college and all the upperclassmen were scary for some reason? Well we tried to go out of our way to make all the ID freshmen feel welcome to come into our areas and encourage them to hang out a bit. And the biggest event we have so far comes tomorrow in the shape of a free barbecue open to all the ID majors. We hope to foster a sense of community togetherness while at the same time encouraging people to cough up the $15 (US) to join IDSA. Small steps so far, but hopefully people see that we are really trying to the job right. "Well Why Don't You Just Marry It Then?" Design of the Month Club: Canon PowerShot S200  If there is one cool tech toy I recommend having on your person at all times it's a digital camera. The Canon I have is perfect for me: it's super small, takes great pictures, and is incredibly durable. |
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