How Do You Do It?

What, exactly, do you do in your business that you believe is unique?  Is there a specific procedure or application you know no one else does in their business?  Are you willing to share?  Have you ever considered teaching at a local college, university, community college or adult education setting?  If the answers are yes, you should consider contacting an institution of higher learning in your area and ask if there is something you might contribute to their efforts.  I have certainly found teaching and mentoring is the most rewarding aspect of my career.  I know, I’m meant to say it’s all about the clients.  I do enjoy working with clients and actually creating room settings and installations but there is so much more to our careers than interior design.  The next thing you’re going to say is you simply don’t have enough time.  Where would you be in your career if every other designer in the world had taken the same position?  Teaching, mentoring, writing and reaching out to young designers simply must become part of your job description.  There is no need for you to spend sixteen hours a week teaching and the like, but finding a way to return what you have received over the years should be important to you.  I may sound preachy now but schools all around the country are cutting back in every area and interior design is seeing cut backs as well.  Who will teach as design departments become smaller and smaller with, in many instances, only one person to teach the whole syllabus?  In fact, I was just informed by Monterey Peninsula College that my services would no longer be needed teaching Business Practices for the Interior Designer after this semester.  I am so disappointed.  The duty will fall to the department head that has never run a business and will audit my course this year to see how it’s done.  Not the best of situations.  Even the department head sees how it will affect the course.  Students will no longer benefit from a teacher who can also be a mentor.  My experience, as far as the Deans of the College are concerned, is of little value.  This after teaching for nine years.  It is so often true that many professional teachers undervalue real life experience in favor of academic experience.  I look around me at Monterey Peninsula College at the way professors dress and the way they teach and I wonder how anyone learns anything at all about the real world.  I will still offer to mentor anyone at the college and the department head knows Robert and I both will help her in any way we can.  I have watched, over the years, how the interior design budget continues to be cut in favor of the hospitality department.  Do you think it has to do with the fact that more men than women go into hospitality.  The needs of women, in my opinion, are continuing to be ignored by the academic hierarchy in favor of the needs of men.  The women in my classes are quiet often recently divorced and in search of a quality career.  Aren’t their needs as important as the needs of young men in another profession, some of whom are not married?  What about equal access.  OK, time for me to get down off my high horse.  In whatever way you can please consider teaching or mentoring those young men and women who want to enter the profession of interior design and are looking for the best possible way to learn our business.  Giving back just a little will bring untold rewards.  I promise.

Comments

[Tom Williams]

Thank you, Nicole, and I, too, look forward to the rest of the semester. Your comment is one of the many rewards of teaching and mentoring that I speak about in the blog. See you Monday.

[Nicole]

Tom,

I'm so sorry to hear about this being your last semester! Thank you so much for mentoring and caring about us young designers! I feel even more lucky to be in your class and I'm looking forward to the rest of the semester.