Are You There PoD? It’s Me, Monty: Reflections from a New Graduate Student
On not one, but two occasions last week I forgot my own address, and I’m absolutely certain it’s because my cerebral cortex was forced into “reboot mode” under the pressure of a PoD-induced shift into unlearning. Please allow me to elaborate.
I am experiencing what I would categorize as full blown systemic-shock. A reactor meltdown. I’ve just started graduate school after being out of the education system for 10 years. New schedule, new environment, new colleagues, new subject matter, new ways of thinking, new ways of making, and a brand new perspective on who, what and how it’s possible to be in this world. I am a boiling frog and the heat has been turned up high and fast. Welcome to Products of Design.
We are in pieces. (DSLR Teardown by Siyin (Cha Cha) Peng)
Expectations >< Reality
Over the summer in the lead up to the start of the school year, I had numerous understandable concerns about the decision I’d made to pursue a master’s degree (is this fiscally irresponsible? Am I throwing my career away? Am I being selfish? What if I hate it? What if I’m too old for this? And what if I’m just plain bad at design?). In spite of everything I’d read about the program and all of the students and faculty I’d spoken with while vetting PoD, I worried the education would be theory-based, and I’d graduate with zero practical experience making physical objects. Ha! This worry turned out to be so deeply unfounded that I would laugh in my own face right now if that was actually possible.
Eva Mo, Qi Guan and Tong Zhao working on everything under the sun.
The Work
I wanted hands-on experience, and I got it. My knuckles are aching right now as I type this—a byproduct of the rapid immersion we’ve had into making and prototyping in the past few weeks.
For our 3D Product Design class led by Sinclair Smith, last week I spent upwards of 6 hours creating rectilinear volumes from blue foam, gingerly spreading joint compound over the entire surface of the volumes, letting them dry, and then sanding them down until the faces were smooth, and the corners and edges sharp. Spread, dry, sand; repeat. I did this 3 times. Some of my more fastidious colleagues continued to a 4th layer—and to impressive results: perfectly blemish-free surfaces. For what purpose, dear Monty, are you doing this? You may be asking. Yes, we’ve been asking ourselves too. My hunch: to reconnect us to our hands, to show us what it means to refine, and to illustrate the emotive power hidden in subtleties of form. Sinclair adds that the exercise directly involves us in the production consequences of what we design and send out into the world.
Also taxing on the knuckles was our first assignment from Allan Chochinov’s class, Affirming Artifacts: come up with 100 ideas (yes, 100) for how to redesign the last thing we threw away, along with physical prototypes of 2 of these ideas, at minimum. I now travel with sticky notes in my pocket, scribbling down ideas as they pop into my head, each one a tick closer to my total. One prototype must work, but both need to be at scale. My classmates saw, sand, spray, tape, cut, glue, render, print, paint and stitch their way through the assignment, presenting their work in class at the end of the week. We have cuts, scrapes, and a new sense of what’s possible when given an incredibly tight deadline that urges, “just make it!”. (Shout out to the boxes of Smooth-On sitting around the department that reiterate this point. P.S. Sponsor me?).
The Students
Speaking of my classmates, possibly the most rewarding experience I’ve had in the past few weeks has been collaborating with them. Watching the idea-generation process happen in real-time and witnessing the results that follow is like looking at a brain scan and seeing the neurons light up. We each have unique ways of thinking, and at the same time, regardless of where we grew up, what our first languages are, and what we were doing before we came to PoD, we are all working towards common goals.
We’re very much “in this together” and we’re all soldiering on through the avalanche of work. I ask some of my classmates how they’re feeling, and what they think of the program so far: “It’s action-packed”, says Ben Hone, who’s prototyping a box slingshot for delivery workers. “It’s officially real”, laughs Ana Aghjayan, juggling soldering equipment. A student who shall remain nameless told me that they were so tired, they fell asleep on their floor. In a reflective tone, Tashea Brown shared with me that working with plasticine again brought a rush of nostalgia for her childhood, when she felt more connected to making.
As for me, I’m finding new role-models: Lauren Palazzi has an entirely fearless dive-in-and-do-it attitude (I think Nike’s slogan might actually be about her). Tong Zhao thinks even bigger than what you picture when someone says “think big” (no seriously, BIGGER). Sofia Grystenko brings deep empathy and entirely original style to all of her work. Eva Mo made a genius keychain-securing-device that is rapidly becoming a staple of my everyday life. The list of characteristics to admire goes on and on and on.
Ben Hone icing his cake.
The Faculty
It might be boring, albeit true, to tell you how supportive our professors are, and how hard they are working to create an empathetic, nurturing environment. For instance, next week we’re flipping the script on the language/power dynamic: we’re giving presentations in our first languages so the English-language learners can step into their full power. Native English speakers will present in a different (non-English) language to get a taste of what it’s like to not have full linguistic command.
So, instead, I’ll laude the ways in which the faculty are challenging us: doing the difficult and sometimes unpopular work of interjecting, questioning, and pointing out our previously learned limitations at every opportunity. It’s uncomfortable to face our weaknesses, but it’s how we will grow. (I once asked my therapist, “In your opinion, what is my problem,” and it was the only therapy session I’ve ever had that was worth paying for.) This environment is unquestionably one of extreme and probably painful, growth.
The weak lunches
I’m eating my lunch as I write to you, and it consists solely of food items on the OY range of the color spectrum: a carrot, a block of sharp cheddar, and a package of pre-cut mango that I picked up from the corner bodega. This arrangement was not intentional (I do eat other colors), I just haven’t had time to go to the grocery store since classes commenced (that was 3 weeks ago now). My stomach is starved for calories, but my mind is perfectly satiated, and that is what’s keeping me going in the face of a crumbling social life and a mound of laundry that’s climbing ever higher.
In Conclusion?
Its safe to say that the class of 2026 is no longer “incoming”; we have arrived. Even though it’s only the start of the semester, and hardly enough has happened to know exactly what to expect, each passing moment indicates that we are trending positively. Looking around at my classmates, sanding vigorously or leisurely icing joint compound onto slices of blue foam, I feel the question and answer (“nothing”) form in my mind: what could be better than this?
谢谢您的宝贵时间,
Monty
