Megan Gileza

Undergraduate Experience 

 

"I'm in Architecture." For almost three years, these words served as my mantra; they were an explanation as to why I never had time for anything, a justification for eating all my meals from to-go cartons and not having done laundry in a month, an alibi when I wanted to get out of something, and an overall lifestyle. Through Architecture studio, I developed an intense work ethic, a passion for good design, and an appreciation for detail. For me, "design" has come to be synonymous with "problem solving." One crucial element of good design is not just that it's aesthetic, but that it serves its purpose as well. It's cool to experience a pretty building, but a building has to be more than that—it has to function programmatically, it has to communicate (from overarching design ideas to fundamental elements such as circulation), and it has to stand up.

 

Despite all of the positive contributions Architecture made to my education, during my third year, I realized I needed a change. I'm hugely passionate about design—about the process of creating an experience for someone—but I'm not necessarily passionate about buildings (at least not enough to commit my career to them). I have always been drawn to English and creative writing, but it took me a while to realize that's what I wanted to be doing. Deciding to change my major was very difficult. I grappled with the concept of "quitting"—of giving up on something because it’s too hard, or something like that—but  eventually contented myself with the idea that I'd be making a change for my own personal happiness, and that’s what is really important. Once I officially made the switch, I still had to finish out the semester. My last project as an Architecture student was a group design competition. I chose group members that challenged me to push myself and approached the project whole-heartedly; I decided that if I was going to dedicate my time to something, I wanted to do it well. We won the competition, and I'm incredibly proud to have left Architecture on a high note. 

 

Once I committed to the change, the transition into English was an easy one for me. I'm an avid reader with a love of writing and a talent for editing, passions and skills that I've discovered and sharpened in courses such as contemporary fiction, where I expanded my post-modern artistic horizons by reading authors such as Angela Carter and Kathy Acker; in creative nonfiction and poetry workshops, where I explored my personal creative energies, as well as learned to craft something of quality in order to verbally express my own ideas and experiences; and in professional writing and technical editing, where I practiced communicating clearly and effectively. Writing is a kind of architecture in itself: elements are orchestrated to create an experience—except here, the elements are tone, diction, syntax, and imagery.  

 

I involved myself further in the creative culture of English at Tech by joining the staff of Silhouette, Tech’s literary and art magazine, first as a graphic designer and then as the organization’s business manager. In these roles, I got to interact with some awesome student work. I also learned about the technical aspects of managing a staff, producing a publication, and promoting a brand. It's here that I experienced a melding of my two worlds, Architecture and English, into a single space where both the visual and verbal aesthetics, structure, details, and functionality of a thing all have to come together to create an engaging, cohesive experience for a reader.