My StartUp Week
This week (2/4/22-2/12/22) I participated in SCAD StartUp, a week-long design challenge, led by the SCAD user experience design club known as FLUX and supported by the SCADpro collaborative design studio. Although in its 8th year, this was the first time I’d heard about and participated— and boy do I wish I had known sooner!
Since I didn’t know anyone and just heard about startup week 2 days before kickoff, I was placed on a random team of five students. I would like to thank whoever put my team together, because I had the greatest time collaborating with them. We called ourselves team JHADE (one letter for each of our names- I’m the E) and got started working right away. Our finished project palpod can be found here on this site
I learned so much in one week, not only in the design process but about myself. Turns out, burning yourself out during midterms week to do a school-club run competition is worth all the all-nighters, and stress, especially when you have a great team by your side. Although we didn't win the competition for our pitch, I still had the time of my life…
…and even won a prize myself.
An additional competition ran during StartUp week. Called the MVP award, startup competitors could enter to win a prize of $4000 by submitting a 1-2 minute video answering this prompt:
Sometimes we look back at our lives and ask ourselves, "how did we get here?" As SCAD students, we all decided to follow our passions, chase our goals, and dream big. In a 1-2 minute video, tell us your story about your passion, any passion. Take us on an emotional rollercoaster.
I submitted a video titled “Practice Gives Birth to Art”, or “Oefening Baart Kunst” about my journey of learning dutch and how it changed my life. I still remember the moment they announced the winners. Since the finals were on zoom, I was actually doing another school assignment while listening to the announcements, when this notification popped up on my screen:
That’s when I knew I had won. I said a few words that I don’t remember and called my mom right away. Definitely a moment to remember…and then went straight back into homework, but it was still surreal. I
can’t believe out of 70 submissions, my story was the one that captured the judges.
can’t believe out of 70 submissions, my story was the one that captured the judges.
I’m so glad I tried out StartUp week, and I wish I wasn’t graduating so I could do it all over again.
I would like to thank all of the organizers of StartUp who dedicated their time, the panelists, judges, my teammates, and of course Duolingo and everyone else who started my language journey which helped me win this prize.
-Elianna
I would also like to thank whoever created the startup swagbags because I’ve been wearing mine all week. It’s the absolute perfect size for sketchbooks.
You can see my video submission here.