When I chose to study film in graduate school, I simply followed my way into something that sparked joy and ideas. Having still been in earlier parts of my dance with English as my second language, most movies were easier to understand than some books. Stories came through in facial expressions, landscapes, and music. Born in the era of the Industrial Revolution when humans started to make things and move about at the speed and scale previously unimagined, this craft of motion picture still held a place for both fast and slow build-up and reveal, moments small and big, all in each its own memorable and lasting. With the unconditional support of my parents who never questioned what kind of a job one might aspire to as a film school graduate, I could truly indulge in the experience of learning through love. When I graduated, I walked away with a more informed view of the history and theory of cinema, a group of lifelong friends, and one more thing I didn't expect to gain—an ability to think, write, and communicate more clearly and expressively.
I attribute this wonderful by-product of my film education to the fact that I was studying a subject matter that was already near and dear to me. I didn't have to struggle to access the substance, which meant that there was more time and space to explore both the meaning of the message as well as the medium. There was so much more time to flip everything upside down and inside out, look at it in every which way possible, even previously thought impossible. New ideas and connections formed, and the canvas of my thinking and writing got bigger and more sophisticated as I played with different ways to express what I was observing and formulating. I went to study film to immerse myself in other people's storytelling, and walked away with the possibility that maybe, I, too, am one myself.
Something similar happened as I navigated through the early days of my marketing career and what was the beginning of online communities and various media for expressions. Even though I was no expert at the time, the idea of being there and experiencing it firsthand to learn about the new ways of communicating and connecting with other people felt essential. First there were the message boards, then something called Twitter (where I once claimed the first name only @minjae handle!), and blogging. By the time blogging was a thing, I was working at an agency advising my clients to get in to this new way of building brands and cultivating relationships. And I wanted to walk the talk, so I picked something else near and dear to me to write about—handbags.
Some asked, how frivolous and irrelevant, you're a marketing strategist, why handbags? Dear reader (or shopper?), much like film, handbags were something I spent outsized proportion of my time studying, admiring, poring over, and aspiring to. It was accessible to me (maybe not in price range) but the emergence of e-commerce retail meant I could find and study them online, and try to track them down in person for the tactile experience. For me, fashion has become an indisputably powerful form of self-expression, and I appreciate so much the art and craft of what I get to wear and carry with me as an extension of what I'm trying to signal to the world. And each object has a story behind it, where it was made, why, and how, and how the handbag represents something about the maker's view of the world and that of the person who chooses it. So my blog was a little bit about the history of the brand and the bag, and my own impression and observations about both the aesthetics and the practicalities of each object as a potential owner and a buyer.
Once again, learning through love (of handbag) this time taught me something more than just being a savvy shopper and an admirer of leather goods. I learned how to find and build connections in new ways, discovering other people who shared similar interests, where they were congregating and talking about, using my own blog as a way to create additional connections. I learned about building a content strategy, how to read some basic analytics about my readership, and even started to get pitches from certain brands, which then taught me about this thing called affiliate marketing. I even learned a little bit about the business of retail and fashion, and what role handbags play in that portfolio. I had set out to teach myself a new tool but ended up walking away with whole other sets of useful skills and information, because I chose to fuel my curiosity through something I already loved. My only regret is not having kept up with the said blog, as many others who started similar blogs at the time have gone onto become fashion influencers who are often found in the front rows of major fashion shows.
Today, I'm doing something similar with AI tools. The process of figuring out what types of data sets one cares about, analyzing and organizing them, and building and experimenting with them has been more enjoyable through topics and matters of substance that already come natural to me by my own curiosity and interest. My latest explorations have taken me anywhere from building sample data sets of pre-loved items and fashion archives, to learning about the global supply chain tagging systems and implications for reverse logistics. I realize all of this is someone else's expertise, industry, and job, and there are people who are professionally solving for some of these problems already—and my amateur exploration of these topics isn't meant to compete with that. I'm simply doing this to get myself closer to the medium and a process that are new, through something that is already familiar, everyday, and well-loved by me.
How will YOU choose to learn through love?