Today I officially handed in my last lot of work for my uni degree ever. In May(ish) next year I will graduate with Bachelor of Design (Communication Design) from Swinburne University. Photo is of Celeste, Sara and myself.
It’s a peculiar feeling, very lovely and freeing and probably hasn’t hit me in full yet. I feel like I’ve done quite well this semester, but we’ll have to see. Anyway, watch out world, the study or lack of qualification no longer binds me!
The spider, dropping down from twig,
Unfolds a plan of her devising,
A thin premeditated rig
To use in rising.And all that journey down through space,
In cool descent and loyal hearted,
She spins a ladder to the place
From where she started.Thus I, gone forth as spiders do
In spider’s web a truth discerning,
Attach one silken thread to you
For my returning.-E. B. White
Yesterday I had my last class at uni. Five years since school, three years in Communication Design. I hung around yesterday for a late lecture as a honorary last visit and it came with satisfying closure.
- 1. Observe your world
- 2. Communicate with your world
- 3. Persuade your world in a positive way
I do get a bit over the whole ‘climate change’ stuff sometimes. There are weeks where we thrash it to death through my design course. I do assignments on sustainable waste management and water and discuss how we as designers are both pretty much the problem and the solution. It’s a theme that rocks up in pretty much every class at some point during the semester. So I was a bit ‘mi lase’ (Which basically means ‘I don’t want to’ in Solomon Islands Pijin) with the Blog Action Day theme (Speaking of which, I’m kind of a day late). Then yesterday I spied a comment on someone’s facebook about having despite tried, their carbon footprint had increased in the past six months. From there ensued quite an interesting discussion between me and another who commented on the post.
“I can’t stand it when the hippies tell us it’s so easy to be green. The only way to be effective ecologically seems to be give up our entire way of life, completely… we can’t survive without the way we have life now. Even if only places like factories, hospitals, morgues and food storage places where allowed to continue as they are (which they need too) we are still screwed. I just wish someone could come up with a better efficient form of energy that can produce stuff to the levels we need.”
and then I entered the conversation with something like “Bollocks, yes we can”. Great starter, really about getting someone on my side.
So the conversation went on and honed in on ‘Do the little things make a difference’? As much as we’d like to think the little things don’t always make a huge difference, but the idea of these things and goals like Target 155 (which surely could be lower) is about attitude change which has bigger implications for overall behaviour. At the moment I feel is fair to call out the world around me as being too comfortable, too selfish, too lazy. Myself included. There are many things in regard to climate change that revolve around changing systems that sit at a higher level than many of us operate in but these systems also rely on an attitude change. So lets start with the little things within reach.
The conversation on facebook made me realise something, I do actually care very much about climate change. And fair bit more than I’ve realised. Just perhaps this will have implications for further altering my own behaviour?
Below is an average breakdown of how you use your domestic water… click to zoom.
