Visited another school today and I loved their classrooms! If only we had classrooms like that at UCD. I would be at one of the back tables, watching everything on a screen and participating at a pace I found comfortable.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I know, I absolutely do not feel comfortable working in the labs on campus. Honestly, I just don’t like the idea of everyone being able to see me work. Not that they are, it just wierds me out a little bit. Same thing with my old cubicle at work, but it was a little bit easier for me to plug in headphones there and just ignore everything. In class I’m afraid I’ll miss something important if I tune out too much. I often find myself setting up my laptop on a table and working there, just so I’m facing away from everyone. Weird and pointless, I should get over it right? 

But seeing all the way the classrooms catered to different types of students made me realize, there are others like me out there! People who don’t want to miss out, but don’t want to be at the edges of the room facing away from everyone else.

I’ve also started to notice that creative people here are proud of being creative and designerly. In the U.S. it’s almost shameful to tell your successful business type friends you’re going to art school, or you want to be a designer or creative. They look at you confused and usually say: “Aren’t you afraid you won’t find a job?” Nope, not worried about that at all, because I know we’re in demand, at least the ones who can show up every day to work are.

I wonder if that’s part of us devaluing the arts in education? People just assume its frivolous and you can’t be serious and professional and make money with an art degree. Or that skill at creative work is something your innately born with. Nope, I worked my butt off to be able to manipulate photos and edit audio and write scripts like I do, I don’t appreciate my hard work being devalued that way. 

But here in Denmark, people are proud of it, and people don’t seem to devalue any job, they all seem to be important. I wonder if my views would be any different if I could read the local newspapers or watch local TV or listen to local Radio. Right now I’ve met all sorts of amazing designers and seen some fantastic things, surely what we’ve seen is not representative of the whole of Denmark. I’d be interested to see Denmark more as the Danes do.