Credit: Cindy Wong

Say what? Yes, I know my announcement that I’m leaving Seattle has come as a surprise to many friends and colleagues. They don’t call me a ninja for nuthin’. The reason I was drawn to Seattle, aside its tech scene and love, was a chance to start a new life and a new career change with an educational pit stop at the University of Washington. The catalyst? Who’d of thought that in 2007 — prior to Wall Street’s implosion and the newspaper industry’s shakedown — was that deaths in my family would compel me to examine my life. Am I satisfied? Am I growing? Am I taking advantage of all that life has to offer me? What I saw showed me I needed a change — after all, I am a big believer of this ethos: You are in Charge of Your Own Happiness. 

At that moment of crisis, I wrote my graduate school essay’s intro: ” ‘Self-evolve, innovate or die’  is an unspoken motto for my immigrant family, a hard-earned statement that my parents learned when they arrived in America from war-torn Vietnam.” It’s true. Was I living up to that challenge that my parents bestowed when they first came here? 

By making a change to pursue graduate school, I did. In Seattle, I settled into the University of Washington’s MCDM program, a program that emphasizes communication strategy for digital media from a creative and marketing standpoint. Deep coverage into online communication, usage of social media, business of online content creation, and the nitty gritty on people’s usage of digital media were written and discussed. However, I grappled between being a designer and being a communicator. Between being the academic to being a creator. I was a newspaper journalist and a graphic designer. It was unfamiliar not to produce and to design. For me, in order to “talk the talk about digital media” I wanted to “walk the walk.” Yes, I wanted to be a geek with the credentials to create. I also needed a dramatic career change with mad skillz. I did not just want to be an effective communicator online, I wanted to also make.  Thus, why I realized I needed a better medium to learn how to bridge design, technology, and communication. 

Hence, why I got re-accepted into NYU’s ITP program. Say hello, New York City rent, impressive student loans, and a chance to create my geeky heart out in one of the world’s most exciting cities. God help me. I kid, I kid. The events that have occurred in 2008 — Wall Street’s implosion, collapse of traditional media markets, and the changing job landscape — have convinced me I am heading in the right direction. We need leaders who are informed, are well-versed in technology,  fearless of change, and know how to address it with can-do attitude, innovation and bravado. 

Cheers.