A Brandcenter student can be anyone, from anywhere, with any undergrad degree. Trust me. I was supposed to be a physical therapist. I knew that my potential career path didn’t fit me, but I was really good at it and it was “too late” to switch paths.
Or so I thought.
My sports medicine degree fried my brain and totally wore me down so took a year “off” and worked at a music store. I learned a lot there but it wasn’t my forever job.
I started thinking about going back to school and I always liked the idea of advertising but never pursued it. After being told by a few undergraduate advertising programs that I hadn’t taken enough American history credits, I pretty much gave up. Then a sympathetic advisor at VCU told me to look up the Brandcenter. After some intense research, I knew that this was the place I was looking for.
In the two weeks before the deadline, I threw together a rough art direction application and dropped it off. I got a call back with bad news. I wasn’t a very good art director. However, based on the way I approached the application questions, the Professors thought I’d make a decent Experience Designer and asked me to reapply as one. After looking up what experience design meant, I applied the next day.
I was accepted into the Experience Design track, and have been loving it ever since.
-Shawn Hurley, experience design track, class of 2017