Classes started last week. With it, my long marathon days, which I am getting too old to keep, also started. Not much is left for inspiration or musing about topics between the studio classes, office hours, and post-surgery physical therapy. That is until a student1 asked to meet with me. Her email worried me because she offered no details—I became concerned that she would tell me she was changing her major.
I met this student when she was a freshman in two-dimensional design. Since then, every academic year, this student and I sit to talk about her questions and intentions for that year. This year was no different. When we sat to talk, she went through these questions with me:
How do you deal with comparing yourself to peers?
How do you deal with feeling incompetent while you’re still learning?
How do you deal with the pressure to be the best (even in smaller-scale instances like when you were in college or learning a new topic)?
At the beginning of a new academic year, her questions are good for us all to think through. My answers are here.
On Comparison
We spend considerable time comparing ourselves with others— so much so that it makes us feel less than, left out, and isolated. We then turn our attention to ourselves and maybe overindulge in negative thoughts about our work and even our self-worth.
None of us are immune to it. We do it—all the time. Assuming everything is stable and equal, we often find somebody better than us—they may get more attention or receive a particular honor. We look around and somehow find our situation much more precarious than it actually is.
We’re never content with what we have or don’t have. My answer to my student when she asked me was it is inevitable to feel less than. One of my Iowa State University professors said: “There will always be someone better than you and someone who is worse than you.” I try to live in the space of knowing and accepting that there will always be someone better than me. I focus on learning new things and keep growing, becoming keenly aware of what I need.
When I feel less than, my best solution is to keep creating. It consumes my mind so that I focus less on what others do. That process creates practice, and practice improves skills.
I told my student that we idolize others so much that we forget they, too, bleed. Our heroes are just people. Our inspirations are just people. My student walked away with, “I will start humanizing more and idolizing less.”
On Competence
When I was in Italy, I sometimes tried to order in Italian. One day, I wanted to order slices of bread with no butter. The word for butter is burro. The word for beer is birra. Because of the similarities between these two words, I got mixed up and unintentionally ordered bread and no beer. “Pane senza birra.” We handled the miscommunication with a lot of laughter, and finally, I cemented forever in my brain that “burro” is butter. It was an incompetent and ridiculous moment, albeit hilarious.
Feeling incompetent when you are trying is part and parcel of learning. We can’t learn if we don’t fail. Messing up means we tried to put something into practice; failing means we tried to incorporate a new skill or knowledge. Incompetence that happens in the process of learning is a good thing. Arrogant incompetence is not included (or the incompetence that is aware but does not care).
Often, I embrace looking stupid or ridiculous. And yes, I have been hurt and have hurt others in the process, but all I can do is get up and try again, and if I hurt someone, I apologize.
On Pressure
One of the most fascinating things in life is that no two people will solve a problem exactly the same way (why it can be hard to deliberate copyright issues). We can be similar but not exact. Yes, there are copies out there of anything. But a copy is never the original. We all know that, right?
We appreciate the learning process when copying something because they are the best, and we want to be the best. But, the best at what? And by who’s standards? And by what measures? An art or design competition says that x art or design was the best at that time, under that circumstance, and under those selected jury’s eyes, for that particular moment. That is all it says. If we think about it, it seems like a severely limited set of parameters.
Not only are the parameters limited, but they are also somewhat subjective. I once entered an artwork in a competition. It did not win anything. But later on, my work was selected as one of the 100 Best Artworks of 2021 by Creative Quarterly. It hangs on my wall as a reminder that the selection parameters will always be limited. And that is okay.
One thing I told my student is that we all accomplish things daily that we take for granted. When I feel less than, I remember the things I have been able to accomplish so far and realize how blessed I am. I am incredibly grateful to be creating art and design for a living. I get paid to teach others how to do the same. Clients pay me to create beautiful things to enrich their businesses and lives. I get paid to put something beautiful in the world, which is more than enough; that is amazing.
Alma Hoffmann is a freelance designer, design educator, author of Sketching as Design Thinking, and editor at Smashing Magazine. Temperamental amusing shenanigans, Alma’s Substack, is dedicated to design, life, and everything in between.
Header image by Gowtham AGM on Unsplash.
The student gave Hoffmann permission to share her name and talk about their meeting, which you can read in full on Substack. The above is an edited version of that post, leaving out the student’s name for privacy. ↩︎