I’ve been incredibly lucky to grow up in a district with as many opportunities as Liberty Public Schools. We have such a wide variety of classes for almost any interest. But many students aren’t aware of the opportunities and real world applications many classes provide.

Whether it’s Intro to Market, Intro to Business or Sculpture I, many students haven’t had the opportunity to take a class outside of their comfort zone that gives them an opportunity to experience something new. But in my experience, those classes can be the most valuable to your high school experience.

When I began high school, I planned out my entire schedule: freshman to senior year. I knew which classes I would take when to put me on the exact track to graduate. That plan hasn’t exactly gone perfectly, but it did lead me to eventually taking a fine arts class my first year of high school: graphic design.

When I wrote the class on my course selection form, I viewed it as an easy class, just another way to meet my graduation requirements.

I was never a fine arts kind of student. Some people take choir, or theatre, but I never really clicked with any of those subjects. In my mind, I would take an easy fine arts credit and get it out of the way my freshman year.

Creativity was never something I viewed as my strong suit. I didn’t have the same artistic talents as many of the “fine arts kids” I saw in the programs. But taking graphic design helped me learn that just because I wasn’t creative in the same ways other kids are doesn’t mean I’m not a creative person.

During the first week or two, I hated it. It was filled with upperclassmen, and I had no one to sit by or talk to. We worked on learning programs and design principles as we began the first few projects of the year, and I was excited to start designing, even if my skills weren’t fully developed yet.

I realized how enjoyable and applicable the class truly was once the content started. I realized that designing something that looked good was such a rewarding experience.

Learning the programs was difficult. It was so completely different than anything I’d used before, and I left class feeling confused more often than not. We spent the entire first semester working through Illustrator, a program for more artistic designs with less photos, and the second semester working through Photoshop, a program for manipulating photos and using those in design. Illustrator eventually became easy, but Photoshop took longer to figure out.

Once we began projects such as creating a sketchbook cover or designing a logo for an apple farm, I loved being able to grow my design skills and talents through the content we were being taught. I began to feel proud of the things I was creating for one of the first times in my life.

Towards the end of the year, we even got to do some projects for real people and enter design competitions to have our work featured in the real world.

One of my favorite projects was when we were tasked with creating a banner design for a race. It wasn’t my best design by far, but I learned so much from working through it.

I didn’t take Graphic Design II, but my sophomore year I signed up for Newspaper. Towards the end of that year I became a section editor, meaning I got to edit stories and design pages.

Suddenly, I was using the very same programs and design principles I’d learned in Graphic Design my freshman year.

Designing for Newspaper was difficult, but it was so much easier since I’d had the opportunity to learn the basics in that class freshman year.

I’ve even been able to use that knowledge for presentations and projects in many of my other classes. Many students at Liberty would be so much better off with many of their classes if they took this class.

I’m not saying everyone should take Graphic Design. But I do think it’s so incredibly important for each student to find something that they feel passionately about and get involved at their school. You might even find something that you didn’t think you’d like or use in your day to day life.

Liberty High School and all of Liberty Public Schools give so many opportunities to their students, it’s just a matter of seeking those opportunities out.

You can read more about Liberty’s graphic design programs and find out what other students think on pages 8-9 of our October issue.