For three summers before I had a real internship, I was camp counselor at a local camp called Rec-PAC. This club focused on providing a semi-educational summer camp for families that otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford to send their kids anywhere over the summer. While I knew that eventually I would have to find a real job, I really value the time that I spent there. One of my favorite things about my time with Rec-PAC was the fact that I was able to make a real impact on the kids I worked with. While desk jobs have a lot to offer, I’ll definitely miss the feeling of waking up and getting paid to make people smile.

What I took away from this was that I find impacting others very rewarding. I’d like to be a voice in my industry one day, and I figured I might as well start taking steps toward this now. I figured that there are two main steps to having my voice heard. First, I need to have something to say. Second, I people need to listen to what I have to say.

I began writing on Medium about design in the summer of 2017. I figured if I worked first on figuring out what I had to say, people would listen once what I was saying was interesting. So far I’ve written 3 articles, been published in 1 publication, and just over 190 strangers thought what I had to say was interesting enough to follow my writing.

Here is a link to my account: https://medium.com/@ryanr_____________