Undergraduate / "Close your eyes. Open the window. Look out" - best advice [4]

First of all, thanks a lot for viewing my thread! :)
This is one of the essays I've been working on for Brown Univ

It is obviously no where near perfect :P, therefore please read it and give some feedback if you have time :). Critical comments are also welcome.

Thank you in advance! :)

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Word counted: 550

Essay Prompt:What is the best piece of advice you've ever been given?

"Close your eyes. Open the window. Look out."
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That was the instruction from my art teacher after seeing her poor student staring at the white paper for nearly two hours without progress. As most writers experience writer's block at least once in their life, I, an amateur, self proclaimed artist, also come across moments when the blank canvas precisely reflects my state of mind. This time, I reluctantly followed the advice without knowing that these eight words in three sentences would provoke in me more than just questions about how to create beautiful drawings. They also taught me how to live.

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I groped for the window's dowel. Click! Creak! Ten in the morning and I could feel the warm sunbeam splashed against my face as the two wings were parted. "Keep looking," my teacher said. I knit my brows: all I saw was the vermillion inner wall of my eyelid. However, I soon started to notice things that I normally would have ignored. I smelled a tinge of jasmine scent weaved in the breeze. I heard a repartee of unknown birds and the sound of each undulation as the fish waggled their tails. There appeared in front of my closed eyes the garden I thought I knew so well, yet ever more vivid.

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That day's art lesson ended, but the instruction still occupied my thoughts. Despite my attentive observation, why haven't I noticed those scent and sounds before until I closed my eyes? What else did I miss? Like a chain reaction, these questions aroused in me a sequence of unexpected memories. I remembered how my mom, after emigrated to the South of Vietnam, turned from a dishwasher into one of the most successful Vietnamese women in sixteen years of tireless striving. Being an Asian myself, I remembered witnessing Asian students' severe academic schedules, in which the academy became their second home. They were studying hard to have perfect standardized test scores for "the sake of their future." These flashbacks seemed random, but somehow they reminded me that I was not the only person trying to keep my eyes wide open, hoping not to miss anything or waste any minute. However, this just might have been what went wrong.

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Nowadays, many people are blinded by the belief that an individual's value is based merely on accomplishments and knowledge. As a result, they try to achieve as much as possible, and expect the same of others. This way, it is no wonder that most people fail to see that underneath my mom's image of an independent, determined and smart woman lays a fragile and lonely being, which because of the circumstance she could not nurture. With the advice in mind, I realized there is more to life, nature and people than what the eyes can perceive. I also found out the answers to my questions. By observing intensely, I have missed the chance to rest and simply enjoy the beauty of my surroundings.

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I know that this time was not the last of my artist's block or of my lack of inspiration. However, as the archaic meaning of inspire is "to breathe life into," as long as I am alive and breathing, I will be fine. "Close your eyes. Open the window. Look out." Sometimes, all it needs is a break.

Graduate / SoP for MFA in Design and MA in Global Innovative Design [2]

Hello everyone!

I'm an undergraduate senior wishing to apply for Masters in (Graphic) Design and/or in Global Innovative Design. Below is my first draft of the general Statement of Purpose (aka no info about the grad schools). Any feedbacks are greatly appreciated! Thank you.

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I had always thought how great it would be if limitations do not exist. This thought prompted me to learn English and travel 8844 miles away from home to attend one of the most open-minded universities in the United States. Here, I mastered three languages, penned papers about the queer community in Japan, and discussed racial and political issues that were said to be risky conversing about as a foreigner. It was great. Some of my best in-between classes and activities moments, however, were spent freelancing on the website 99designs, where designers submit competing designs in response to a customer's design brief. In the midst of my liberal education, I came to realize that I wanted to become a designer.

Limitation fascinates me-so much that I spent my undergraduate years scrutinizing it. Indeed, economics is the study of how societies and individuals make choices on allocating scarce resources to satisfy their unlimited wants-or simply put, how people manage within their limitations.

I believe designers are economists, in a sense that they also have to work within their tools and means to achieve a certain goal. There are the clients, who have all the resources, and then there are the designers, who would help the clients come up with better solutions to organizing these resources. Moreover, even when the designers already have these beautiful design ideas in their heads, there are fu---rther limitations such as budget or regulations that they have to deal with. Therefore, design is an economical practice that stimulates my intellectual and aesthetic curiosities.

Thanks to Brown University's open curriculum and location, I got a chance to take graphic design classes, including Typography and Color, in Rhode Island School of Design. One thing I learned from design that I could not completely grasp while studying economics is that sometimes, limitations are beneficial. For example, my Typography II professor, Lucinda Hitchcock, gave us an assignment in which we were limited to a combination of two fonts to typeset a quote. There were eight parts-each had a different parameter that we could vary, such as leading, size, and so on. These limitations had forced me to contemplate on each and every design choice, and also pushed me through times when I thought my creative juices had been parched. Finally, ideas sprung to surface: I crafted typographic compositions I didn't think I could that delivered the understanding of the quote. The limitations given by my professor, in this case, acted as a guide and a catalyst for creativity that in turns exceeds my preceding expectations.

I have learned a few important things from that assignment as well as during the past years as an undergraduate. I learned, from typesetting the quote, of my interests in using typography as a functional tool to effectively convey messages. As product designer Dieter Rams once said: "Design should be as discreet as an English butler," I found typography most beautiful when it evokes responses not by the type appearance itself, but by how typography clearly communicates content while tactfully guiding the audience in its own manner. I also learned, from hours of reading design blogs, freelancing for the website 99designs and learning to code the front end of an interactive web application, that the act of creating something gives me a strong sense of accomplishment. Last but not least, I learned that, when there are no more given limitations, I could personally and deliberately set my own limits to aid in crystalizing my intent.

Therefore, I set a limit-a goal-for my graduate education pursuit. I want to focus on design that bridges the discrepancy between complex systems, data, innovations and people. The type of design that acts like Beatrice Warde's Crystal Goblet or Dieter Rams's English butler, who would present matter in such a way that is accessible and comprehensible for a normal person. I would like to remind those very important and complex intellectuals-economists, scientists, engineers, policy makers, etc.-that, while dealing with big issues like health care or cloud storage or the legitimacy of prostitution, the centrality is always human beings. In other words, I want to lift people's limitation of access through design, like how I had lifted mine through learning languages and studying abroad. This is because I believe good designers should never forget human beings. After all, design is never just about the creator and the creation, but the intimacy sparked between the creation and the audience.

[A paragraph about the grad school and its program]

Setting a limit does not mean my dreams have disappeared or shifted in scope. As I've come to know myself better, they have become more unified, with a clearer sense of purpose. Beneath the travels that have taken me to the U.S., the curiosity that caused me to study economics, the creative vigor that fueled my search for typographic solutions, is the desire to share with people a world I've found to be unimaginably intriguing and beautiful.