Are Visual Commers doomed to be underpaid workhorses for other people?

I spoke to a schoolmate from film just the other day. We were talking about our final year projects and he assumed that viscom students should be working alongside real clients to solve design issues. However, Cailing and I said that working with a real client would hinder our progress and that is no different from being a polytechnic graduate who has been trained to do that.

Still, I'm sticking up for my chosen topic, although it sounds more like a guide to a sociology crash course. But I like doing the research, and I love reading about human interactions. Studying about human behavior benefits designers tonnes more, rather than being one who doesn't know how to appeal to human psychology. For now the information I have gathered may not link to seeing my project as a visual communications project. But I know for sure that eventually it would. Because that's what a viscommer does; we nitpick information and sew it together to form a fabric that one would see and understand. That is visual communications.

Also, I have never thought of myself as being a full-fledged designer. I'd rather be called a creative than a designer. I think the term 'designer' has been so loosely used that the immediate image that comes into mind is one that slogs for other people making pretty (but shallow) things. I agree with Prof. Astrid about getting sick of the generic floral swooshing patterns that many illustrators or designers are always using. And I admit that I have followed that trend in the past. Now, I only wish to be somebody more unique, someone who dares to be different, one who dares to be avant-garde for a change. But sometimes I don't think I can.

I'm worried about who I'll become. I don't want to be a designer who jumps onto every bandwagon. Neither do I want to be stuck at my computer for long periods of time (I shudder at the thought of my ass getting big) doing work for other people. Truthfully, I've thought about leaving this field.

I cook and experiment with food more than I do with sketching on a book. I stop by the supermarket almost every other day to look at the veggies and think of ways that I could cook them or place them in a dish. I think about the flavors intensely, trying to match ingredient A to ingredient B. And I like the science behind the cooking. I control the flame, the intensity of the flavor, the hardness or softness of the ingredient, the way it looks on a plate. I think about the person who eats it, whether they would like it or not, and I try to make them eat differently from their usual chow. I feel that I am more instinctive with flavors and smell than with creating something on a piece of paper. I'm still thinking about who I want to be.