Last month, at something like 4 a.m. in Laura’s apartment, I was splayed across her couch, rambling half asleep as she nodded off on her beanbag. Alex turns to me and asked, very casually, “Insia, do you ever think about how, one day, we’ll talk about you the way you talk about those design editors from your freshman year?”
If you asked me last year about the title of design editor, I would’ve probably ignored anything to do with myself and my awards, the dozens of magazines I’d scrupulously designed and laid out, or the hundreds of illustrations I created over the years.
Instead, I’d probably tell you about the design editors of the 139th board. The night I opened Adobe InDesign for the first time, when Collin showed me how to make a dropcap, and I was oblivious to how much this app would dominate my life. Or the one spent chipping through my first A1, sitting beside Lilian as she illustrated the cover of that year’s housing guide on the now incredibly broken design couch. Maybe about hot pot with Design 140, the subsequent board, and christening every Wednesday night by listening to Clairo’s “Sofia” with Sophia. How I came to adore 34th Street Magazine as I executed Wei-An’s genius packages, a testament to her ingenuity as a fellow designer-cognitive scientist. Falling in love with digital art all over again, watching Janine and Emmi school me in Procreate and Photoshop, and laughing through long production nights thanks to Anish and Katrina’s biting humor.
However, above all, I’d fixate on how much I wasn’t like these incredible, talented people. How unearned this title was.
My life has been defined by serendipity. Growing up in New York City meant applying to elementary, middle, and high school. And with that came questions about my long-term goals, the cultivation of extracurricular activities, and the curation of my identity and ‘story.’ Weirdly enough, I don’t think I ever really intended to curate this kind of identity for myself; it just kind of happened. Through miracle after miracle, I managed to claw my way up school to school — and eventually off Penn’s waitlist — picking up debate in middle school because my crush was in it, going to random club meetings to skirt my curfew, and even graduating high school with an associate’s degree — all on a whim.
Unfortunately, the luck seemed to have run out. Stumbling into design editorship with this aimlessness and lack of ambition was terrifying. Everything that could go wrong, went wrong — the designers I came up with left and moved on, and I was left to rebuild from nothing. The long nights and the hours spent planning revealed to me more than I’d ever anticipated: how socially motivated I am for someone so ridiculously lonely.
I realized some fairly obvious things; namely, that community not only takes time and effort, but also can’t be forced. I spent many a production night resenting the empty design pit, and even today, I lament that, despite all the tortured nights and Sunday meetings, I never found my footing within Street. No amount of admiration I harbored would be enough to truly bond me to the people I idolized, let alone transform me into them.
Thus, I gave up on trying to emulate the greats. Jaded, designing for Street sometimes felt transactional and embarrassing, with every difficult production night serving as a constant reminder of my social ineptitude and isolation.
So, when asked that innocuous question by Alex, something clicked. That my constant anxiety about filling big shoes and fitting into small circles mattered to no one but me. That just as Collin and Lilian shaped my freshman year, in some part, I’d done the same for this new class of designers.
I find myself admiring the current design board, now double the size of my own. During bustling production nights spearheaded by Kate and Annelise, laughter has returned to the design pit. Alex, Andy, and Kiki’s tag-teamed spreads, Julia and Amy’s gorgeous illustrations, and Chenyao and Eunice’s photo manipulations are such a welcome breath of fresh air. At long last, I find myself once again holed up in the office, laughing the night away, long after prod’s ended, this time surrounded by all these new faces — relishing in the fact that I, at least in some small way, helped make this happen. That, despite my woes, the giant “Luigi Loves Design 141” flag was a worthwhile investment, and my quirks and eccentricities might’ve been charming, after all.
In spite of the trials and tribulations, I wouldn’t trade these last three years for the world. I could write page after page about how design boards 139-142 have forever changed me. I’ll forever treasure turning 21 in the Pink Palace during our penultimate prod of all time, and Design’s great Pelicana’s run finally coming to fruition. I’m eternally grateful to Makayla for singlehandedly keeping me alive and holding down the DP fort, and to Jackson for being the best partner-in-crime (the crime being good visuals) a girl could ask for. College would be nothing without Dana, the New Jersey to my New York, the apple of my eye. And, of course, Srikar, whose impact on my life couldn’t ever be put into words (or incorrectly applied idioms).
Ultimately, I never became the kind of design editor I thought I was supposed to be. But I’m starting to be okay with that, because maybe one day they will talk about Design 141 the way I talk about the ones before it. And, somewhere in that story, I’ll be there, too. How serendipitous.
INSIA HAQUE is a College senior studying cognitive science from New York, N.Y. She served as design editor on the 141st Board of The Daily Pennsylvanian, Inc. Previously, she served as an arts and style editor and Street social media editor. Her email is insia@sas.upenn.edu.
