Progolgue I set a little challenge for myself to get better at writing and sharing my thoughts. Nothing will change unless I do, so here’s a month of showing you how bad my writing is.


In today’s piece:

you’re not just gonna get handed opportunities

a thing i didn’t expect to learn in uni

why I write


• 02 October 2022

5 months ago, on a Friday, I handed in my final year project to my lecturers at IXD Belfast and the following Monday, I joined Dawson Andrews as a Junior Designer. Fresh out of uni, I was petrified to start a real job and imposter syndrome kicked in. (Worth mentioning that from day 1 I felt like part of the team at DA and everyone on the team are amongst the nicest people I’ve ever met) I told myself I’d ease into the new role and started getting comfortable with my day-to-day tasks. I began to feel too comfortable though and remembered that what got me this far was anything but that feeling.

Back when I was in first year, I was terribly homesick. Coming all the way from Luxembourg, a tiny country that doesn’t offer any design degrees simply because it wouldn’t have enough applicants due to the size of it, I decided to get a degree in Belfast, Northern Ireland. With one suitcase and a carry-on I dove straight into the deep end. I cried way more often than I feel comfortable to admit and as my lecturers can attest, I thought of dropping out on more than one occasion. It wasn’t until I attended a talk by Peter Johnston that I changed my outlook on the situation. He was kind enough to stay after his talk and chat to the attendants. After telling him how I felt he just said (and I’m paraphrasing) “nothing worth having comes easy, you’ve got this far so why give up now”. From all the advice I’ve got up until that point, that one stuck with me and I followed his advice: I stayed at uni, made an effort to visit my family more often and tried to make the most of my time at uni.

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My friend Katie Ireland, me and Peter Johnston, from his talk at Ulster Uni (2018)

Sitting around with idle hands isn’t and never was for me. So when COVID hit and everyone was putting in the effort to try and stay sane, one of those people was Chris Murphy (my then lecturer), who was generously running free online design lectures and hosting various designers for talks. I wanted to give back and designed a little icon and twitter banner for his “Espresso Lectures”. I never thought that I’d get anything out of doing it; I was even hesitant to post it (because who do I think I am, designing things and thinking they’re good enough to share with other people?!). So I ended up posting it on Twitter with a wee caption that read “fan art”. Long story short, Chris loved it so much that during a time when it was nearly impossible to get a placement, he offered me one. To my knowledge, Chris wasn’t looking to hire anyone at the time, but because I went and actively put myself out there, I created that opportunity for myself.