Thoughts

It has been about ten days since my final presentation and I am back home. I have a clearer image of what the course has offered me, but I will be wondering what the whole Amsterdam experience was about for many years to come!

This morning I woke up to a BBC documentary interviewing Neil and talking about the spread of FabLabs. I felt all that enthusiasm in my stomach, which had mostly been absent during the Academy. Sometimes I thought that I wasn't on a fabrication course but an electronics course, because of all the emphasis that was given to the specific area. I feel that the course outline was extremely one-sided, whereas I believed that it would be a little more flexible in allowing us to focus on the areas we find challenging. I believe that a course aimed for adults could allow for more personalized paths…

I also found it completely unreasonable that the final project deliverables were so clear about electronics, but vague when it came to other processes. Isn't laser cutting a fab technique? 3D printing? Moulding and casting? Personally I would have liked to play further with CNC produced forms and I wanted to experiment with laser cutting patterns on fabric. I needed a more aesthetically pleasing final product. I do appreciate my stool, but at the end of the day I was just making it to match the criteria. I don't believe that it looks like a product of mine and I certainly don't think I will be adding it to my product line as it is.

As a person who left my job, my pay and my country to join the Academy I would have liked a clearer explanation of how the course operated on the online description. I was completely suprised to figure out that there were no taught classes every day and how reliant we were on internet tutorials in order to deliver what was necessary. When I left I believed that I was joining a fully taught course and I really, really struggled to stay motivated.

To cut a long story short, I believe that through Fab Academy I have reached my goal of learning a completely new set of skills and I am looking forward to proceeding with my own projects soon. I hope I can utilize these new skills in ways that will be more satisfying to me and useful to the people around me.

It was an extremely bumpy ride but I believe that I have made the most of it. The best is yet to come …

* Thank you very much bb :-)