To Travel and Help

What are you going to do after graduation? Are you trying to find a job back home? What would be your perfect job?

With my graduation a little over two months away, I seem to be asked these questions every day. And I never really know quite how to answer. Yes, I’m getting a degree in Graphic Design, but I don’t know if I want to be just a graphic designer. Yes, I’ve applied to jobs near Kansas City, but I’m not sure I want to live there. Yes, there are tons of careers that sound awesome, but I don’t know if I would call them perfect.

I’m not sure if my perfect job exists. Yet.

There has always been this part of me that has wanted to see the world. I love exploring new places and diving into different cultures. It’s been engrained in me since I was a small child. I’ve loved listening to my dad’s stories of riding camels and sleeping in yurts for as long as I can remember. I’ve taken every opportunity to get out of the country that I could. Nothing gets me more excited then sitting in an airport with the boarding pass in my hand.

But I also want to do something with this ridiculously expensive piece of paper that I have spent four years work towards. I want to be creating, design and making. I need to be creating something or I feel like I’m just taking us space. I want to inform people through my craft.

If I could do anything, it would be to travel and help. I want to move from place to place, creating for the good of others. If I could, I work only for organizations that may not otherwise be able to afford good design. I want to work for the mom and pop diner in Maine that need better menus, the non-profit with the mission of abolishing slavery in Athens, the refugee camps in Germany that need fundraising materials, and the start up publisher needing book cover art in South Africa.

I want to go everywhere, see everything and make as much as I can. I wouldn’t mind living on close to nothing. Because, for me, the experiences and relationships I would be making are payment enough.

For a moment, I thought this dream might be coming true. I had an internship set up in the spring with a company in Dublin does exactly this. They take on giant clients and work with them to sponsor their smaller projects. But visas are a dumb thing.

So now I am back to square one. But the starting line can be the best part. I don’t know where the journey of my career will take me, but I know that I have to make it awesome.