#9 - Stacie Woolsey - Make Your Own Masters

In this episode I recorded in the fall, and have sat on it until now. I think it will be especially intriguing for those of you who have considered a next step in education and those who are continually looking to educate themselves.

After graduating from Kingston University in graphic design, and seeking advice from designers she admired, Stacie Woolsey, who I’m going to be talking to today found that postgraduate education was, unofficially, the only way in. But when she realized it would cost her £40,000 including living expenses, she came up with the Make Your Own Masters project: a series of briefs she requested from designers, and completed in her own time, between bar jobs. She completed four projects over 18 months which resulted in a final project which she exhibited in her own “design show”. The four projects she did were based around anthropological futures - the study of current behaviours for future speculation. The four projects were:

1. New Coal - a project that looks at a speculative future for working class mining towns
   
2. Faith in the Fish - a study on micro-plastics as a modern parasite
   
3. Milk - how we might redesign milk for those who actually need it
   
4. Dirty Soaps - a project about exposing infants to just enough dirt, while maintaining the parental need to nurture and protect.
   

In her words, M.Y.O.M. HAS ALLOWED AND ENABLED HER TO:

Forge her discipline ‘Anthropological Futures’ - making her the only graduate in this field.

Have confidence in her own work, her voice and what she can bring to this industry.

Build a professional network of 100+ peers, mentors and briefers.

Develop a portfolio that has allowed her to work with brands and institutions such as Selfridges, BBC, ICA, John Lewis, Science Gallery, Dezeen and more.

I made two rookie mistakes with this episode. The first is that I went ahead with the podcast even though the room she was in was a bit noisy, so her audio isn’t great. The second is that I forgot to begin the recording for the first few minutes… hmmm. Anyways, in the beginning she talked about how she found out that she was dyslexic at 18 and that Because she didn’t realize it for so long, she had to work really hard to learn things and figure them out in different ways. I began to speculate that that is one of the reasons she got creative and figured out how to get a masters without the 40,000 pounds or roughly 46,000 USD.

She spoke about how Make Your Own Masters came about. She worked at some  design firm not learning much of what she wanted to learn, while realizing she wasn’t really a designer, but still wanted to create projects worth having in her portfolio, so she decided to do what she calls “freelance learning” - intentional, self driven learning.

"We need to make education less elitist and create practical solutions that are not restricted by income, location or background." - Stacie Woolsey