My Dreams & Aspirations (Since A Young Age Until Now Due To Manga)
As I progressively get older, my dreams and aspirations somewhere along the line became too realistic, pessimistic, mild even. When I was younger my dreams were wild, crazy, and fun, but growing into adulthood they changed. As a young teen in intermediate school (5-6 grade) I wanted to be a zoologist, a photographer, and a patissier (pastry maker). These were partially influenced by the fictional books that I read as well as my surrounding environment at the time. Then came middle school (7-8 grade) where I started reading even more manga because the library had a small collection of their own. This and the art classes that I took influenced me into wanting to become a mangaka (manga artist/author) or any artist in general. I knew I had great ideas just not the skills to show for it. I carried this momentum with me when I went into high school. A little background about me is that I went to 2 high schools. I attended freshman and sophomore year at one school and then transferred and spent my junior and senior year of high school in another school. The first high school is where I retook basic arts and did my first year in ceramics (during sophomore year). I loved it. So when I transferred schools, I made sure to take more ceramics/sculpture classes because I loved working with clay. I thought that this was a potential future career at the time. I also enrolled in their fashion design classes because that was another interest that I had. I spent the last two years of high school doing fashion design so I thought that this was another potential future career. Even though I was not the best in the class I was willing to practice and improve if this were going to be my career. However. My dreams were squished. My parents rejected the idea of doing any type of art as a major based on the idea that “they don’t make enough money”. All of a sudden I had no idea what I wanted to do anymore. I didn’t want to disappoint my parents because of everything they’ve done for me so I was lost. Taking core classes at a community college, trying to figure out where I wanted to go now, I didn’t have any aspirations or dreams. All I had were standards or key components that the future career that I was going to pursue had to have. 1) Stability 2) Availability and 3) Flexibility/Adaptability. The career that I was going to pursue had to have a stable income, have enough demand in the job force, and it wasn’t just one skill or process done over and over again without variation (meaning it had to be occasionally different). I narrowed down my choices by eliminated careers I had no interest in whatsoever in order to make sure I wasn’t signing up to be miserable in my career (because I have heard multiple times as well as read in manga, to do something you love and not hate or else every day when you go to work you will be miserable). My choices became very limited at this point and I had to research a lot about majors that had creative aspects (since I did not want to cut off my creativity completely) and that lead me to Marketing. I learned a lot about marketing and the different aspects of marketing and I have to say I am satisfied with my choice. Now my dream is to be a graphic designer and I’m slowly making my way there. If you ask specifically what type of graphic designer I am still unsure since there are also a ton of aspects to graphic design, so all I can say is that I’ll get back to you on that. All of this progress would have been insanely difficult without the support of manga. Manga was where I would go to rest and refresh before I would face the world again, and it is what influenced me to remain creative. Without manga, I doubt I would be who I am and where I am today.
