College Dropout
Yin’s life is all about my personal journey and so far I’ve only spoken about my present. I wasn’t always this motivated, focused and passionate – far from it.
In fact, in 2007, I was a college dropout (that’s university for UK folks – Ye’s album title sounded cooler ha). Prior to that, I had just messed up my A-levels going from a ghetto comprehensive school to an all boy’s grammar school. Life at 17 sucked; studying chemistry, maths and computing at sixth form was draining and limited. I was an avid digital artist, loved all things Adobe and spent most of my spare time sat in front of a computer designing wallpapers and geeky forum signatures on Photoshop. That was my only creative outlet, little did know that little hobby would change the direction of my life completely.
Some of you might be able to relate, ethnic parents – bane of my youth, “hate” would have been the ignorant term that I’d use back then to describe my relationship with my elders. Over-protective and strict parents meant I hardly ever left home, curfews and other rules meant I never had really experienced the ‘real world’ ’til I left for University.
That explained why I chose to study outside of London to break-away from my parents, purely for the independence and freedom. I opted to go for a degree in Computer Games Design. Why? Gaming was one of my favourite past times – I’d wake up at 6:30 just to get in a few games of PES before school. Let’s just say designing games is no where near as fun as playing them so my year in Staffordshire university revolved around partying, drinking, more partying and drinking. Mo’ freedom, mo’ problems – the abundance of freedom led to all that with no one to tell me off. In the end, the degree and town life wasn’t for me and by early 2007 I had decided to leave the course at the end of the year. The way I had not even told my parents… they eventually found out via a letter sent home. I don’t need to explain their reaction, let’s just say somebody got hurt real bad.
I was labelled a failure by my family. That was hard to take when hearing it come straight from the mouths of the people that created you. I was lost – no direction in life, no goals, nada. I went back to sitting in my parent’s house designing wallpapers for a site/forum that I helped to run: soccer-art.co.uk. I never would’ve thought the hobby would become my full-time job, as I freelanced for the next 12 months from my bedroom. Somehow @Nico21Horia and I ended up being contracted to ‘OleOle’ – a football forum/social network. This is when I fell in love design and really believed that I could get somewhere in life by simply doing what I loved. Designing for them accelerated my love for branding and then marketing, which led up to me applying to study Creative Advertising at LCC.
The rest of the story – you’ve already read all about it – click here, here and here. I’ve by no means ‘made it yet, just finished the first chapter of this book of life with a plan. The point of this post? To show folks that we all have our own paths and journeys. I do not having any regrets whatsoever, why dwell on past errors when you can learn from them and move forward?! I urge you to discover your passion and chase it. Chase it the same way you’d search for something important that you misplaced. You know, that feeling where you start perspiring beyond belief in search of your oyster card so you don’t run late to work. You know you won’t stop searching till you find it. That’s what you call passion and that’s what you definitely need when you’re chasing your dream. Your dedication, determination, motivation for life will change once you know what direction you’re going in. I guarantee that.
I’ll leave you with a few photographs I shot at Reload Sessions recording on Saturday night. Shout out to everyone who came down on the day, always a pleasure to be surrounded by such talented individuals.
Location – La Barrique Wine Bar, ExCel
