The Places You Go and the People You Meet

Jennifer Thackham talks us through the opportunities she received through the Master of Arts in Strategic Design, and how Furman’s partnership with Miami Ad School opens up the world to our graduates.

From the transcript:

All the professors at Furman are fantastic. All the people that are putting this program together have been meticulously going through and editing and making sure that we’re taking the best classes by the best people such as the people that come along with Miami Ad School.

They have schools everywhere and in a bunch of different countries so you have connections with a lot more people than you think you do. I can talk to any graduate from Miami Ad School from whichever school they went to, and we have a rapport with each other because we all know what we’ve been through. We all understand it.

Other than me wanting to grow myself as a designer and a strategist, I knew I wanted to travel and I knew I wanted to have a job elsewhere and to be able to have that foreign travel. Being connected with the people over there is really great because you can talk to them about job opportunities and stuff like that.

I can just say, “Oh yeah, I’m from Miami Ad School, and I’m doing the master’s program.” and they’re like, “Oh I know who you are! You’re doing this* and we’ve all talked about you.” It’s great, because introductions are super weird.

One of the other things as well that was super helpful is that we have design conversations every week. Those are led by some amazingly fantastic professionals in the field. I have met some people that I would have never thought that I would have ever met before. I’ve had one-on-one conversations with people like Craig Frazier, who is a fantastic illustrator.

I’ve spent a lot of this time honestly  just reaching out to people and talking to them and kind of just learning from people and seeing what they did after they graduated, getting some type of mentorship out of it. Every single week, whether it be on Zoom or in person, you’re meeting with these people and they’re asking you to reach out and add them on LinkedIn and become a connection and have a rapport back and forth.

All of that is super helpful because, ultimately, you don’t know who you could be talking to or talking about in a job interview and you could be like, “You talked to my school two months ago, and I remember everything you said and it was super great!”