What’s one thing in life that makes you incredibly excited? The thing you’re day dreaming about when you should be studying or working. The thing you bore all your friends about when you spew forth endlessly about it at them.

For me, one of those things is design.

And I remember the exact moment when design clicked in my consciousness.

As a child, I had gotten a free, tacky electronic toy with something else that I can’t remember. It was one of those black and white electronic toys that had a set of pre-programmed games, such as tetris and space invaders. It wasn’t great. But when I got it, a thought, that had never before occurred to me, popped into my mind:

“Someone actually came up with this!”

Someone had sat down, thought about what this product should be, how it should look, and how it should be made.

So the logical next thought for a young Ameya was that if this product was designed, then so too was everything else.

Yes. EVERYTHING…

Even for something as simple as a spoon, a utensil that has existed for millennia. Every spoon that you have ever held in your hand was designed by somebody, who put in (a lot or little) thought and effort into how the spoon would exist, operate, and be produced.

If at this point you’re bored, skip ahead to the last paragraph. If you’re not yet bored, congrats - you’re in for a treat; albeit a long treat that tests your desire for instant gratification.

In recent years, I’ve sought to delve into this passion for design. I listen to a range of Design focused podcasts (Design Matters; The Design of Business | The Business of Design; 99% Invisible; The Observatory), subscribe to magazines including Architectural Digest, and have visited design museums in Singapore, Copenhagen, and London.

So when the hosts of The Observatory released a book of curated design criticism essays from their website, Design Observer, I knew I had to read it. As I dived into Culture Is Not Always Popular, I was surprised by how much the content I was reading related directly to the thoughts I was having as someone running the finishing lap of my time at business school.

One of the first essays that grabbed my attention as I read, and re-read, it was Jessica Helfand’s Open Letter to Design Students Everywhere. Apart from providing a reassuring voice for students going into an unknown and uncertain future, as we all are, Helfand challenges students to have a life thesis, amongst other things. As she puts it:

“I will go to my grave insisting that each and every one of you find the elevator version (also known as the Hollywood log-line) of your topic, that expresses in a smart and pithy fashion WHAT YOUR THESIS IS — while at the same time, opening yourself up to as many ways of producing work that reflects and extends and amplifies your central idea.”

So that got me thinking. What IS my life thesis? How would I sum up the things I do, and what I want to do, in one succinct statement. After much reflection and refinement, the thesis of my life is that

“The biggest problems are only solved by those with the most diverse experiences”

This thesis explains my desire to be a management consultant and eventually enter politics as an elected representative, in order to solve the biggest problems facing our economy and society. It explains why I love to try different things. Why I love to travel. Why I love visiting art galleries as much as I love to surf, ski, and play soccer. It explains why I host Interesting Conversations (to be re-branded and relaunched in Spring) and have art projects. More than anything else, it just feels congruent to who I am, right down to the core.

And there is evidence for this.

In a recent episode of the excellent Podcast series, Conversations, mathematician Geordie Williamson explained how his childhood of growing up in country NSW and wandering around in the bush helped him solve a decades-old mathematical problem and become the youngest living member of Britain’s Royal Society.

As I continued to read through random essays in Culture Is Not Always Popular, the recommendation for a diversity of experiences kept coming up.

In Warning: May Contain Non-Design Content, Michael Bierut talked about the need to expose yourself to a range of diverse experiences and ideas (in his case, the opera Einstein on the Beach - which I am now obsessed with!) in order to understand the work that you are trying to make. In the titular article Culture is Not Always Popular, Helfand and William Drenttel talked about the need to have a more expansive engagement with the world, in order to ensure that you are participating in the world in a way that actually reflects how the world is. Given how out of touch many business students (including myself) are, with the world at large, I think this is especially important.

So with four months left until we graduate and enter the real world, what are you doing to discover and formulate your life thesis? What are you actually doing to have the diverse life experiences that you want to have? How do you want to spend your remaining time with your classmates, a group of people that you may never see again after June?

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Want to know more about graphic design? This article is a great introduction