A blog post by Clint Rogers [alumni of the BYU IP&T program determined to change the world] reminded me of an insight--question really--that I hadn't recorded. It ended up too long to be a reasonable comment to his post...so I'm just posting it here.

I, too, enjoyed Mr. Rusesabagina's address at the BYU forum. Perhaps the most interesting part of the experience for me, however, occurred on the walk back to class afterward: Engulfed in a crowd of milling students crossing the street, I found myself puzzling over half a dozen remarkably similar conversations hanging in the frigid air. They all went something like this:

I got glasses last weekend.

After weeks of leaning across aisles to whisper to classmates; "can you read that!?" months of feeling like a dolt because I couldn't seem to figure out the street number intervals in Provo, and years of going to bed with a splitting headache any time I watched a movie, I finally went in for an eye exam.

The ophthalmologist [gotta love that silent "l"] made sure I still knew the alphabet, flicked dozens of corrections in front of my face for several minutes--changing everything from the aspect ratio to the contrast, resolution, angle and skew of my world [made me a little loopy, actually] and then, with obvious relish, led me to a big bay window overlooking the South face of Mount Timponogos. "This is what you've been missing."

It's official. Just as my first semesters of graphic design instruction flayed the visual world from invoices to billboards to cafe menus open to mental [and sometimes verbal] critique on type choice, color, hierarchy and balance and started the incessant running design commentary that whirs and clicks in the back of my mind every waking [and some sleeping] hours, effectively ending all hope of passively experiencing anything from movie-going to sending myself flowers, these first semesters of instructional design coursework have ruined me...again.