Wondering what more I could have done?

Just having a bit of reflection this evening over the last project. Overall I achieved 56, the pass rate is 40 which meant that I received 16 marks over. However, I was feeling very down about this after learning the marks everyone else achieved. It started to make me think my work wasn't good enough.


Now, after reflecting on the effort and amount of work I produced, I think I can say that I could have put more effort in. I am in no way doubting the amount of time I spent on the work as I spent most evenings and afternoons doing the work. I am doubting the distractions and effort into doing the in between work as well as the final presentations.


The final presentations were no way near my standards, well saying that in the past a project tended to last months, not days. The projects in the first 6 weeks have really opened up my eyes to what university work is going to be like. Maybe I didn't realise how much work was expected and the quality of work that would be produced. At A-levels you concentrate on your own work and occasionally see other people's but you had your own task or project to work on so there was no method of comparison? At University we're competing against everyone because that is what it is going to be like when I graduate, 100 people from my course are going to be looking for jobs. That added to the 100 other universities there are with Graphic Design students graduating. Definitely going to have to learn to stand out!


Anyway, back to the project, I feel like I have wasted a lot of time ensuring that all the in between work was up to scratch - Spending too much time thinking about other ideas to build up the presentation of work, or coming up with the idea and filling in all the work in between. The second project helped me to realise it's more about the final outcomes of the projects as there was not as much pressure put on producing sketchbooks. This helped me to focus more on improving the final design without doing unnecessary tests or work to make it seem like more.


Definitely learned a lesson here, I need to start thinking about the later stages of design, the final outcome because at the end of the day that is what actually matters to the client. They are not going to care about how much blood sweat and tears you've put into all the initial ideas and the presentation of the research is not going to matter if they think you haven't put enough effort into the final presentation. So from now on I'm going to start doing what everyone else seems to be doing and thinking about the final idea from the word go, because that's how it will develop better.