Advice for UX freshmen

This speech I wrote for my GS 1003 class. The idea was to give advice to incoming freshmen specific to your major.

I like how it turned out, and I was proud of my work and I hope that came through when I read my speech, but afterwards, my professor noted that my speech was kind of negative in nature.

Howdy y’all. My name is Debra, and I am a user experience major.

I just want to say congratulations on finding the major, because during my welcome week presentation, there were only five first year UXers and only two of them, including me, were freshmen.

My one piece of advice for you is to make friends within your major.

I know next to nothing about the other majors here. I know what my roommates are and that we have different models of laptops and that’s about it. I do know that the AE freshman had enough people to take a boat tour during welcome week. Like what?

I don’t have any numbers on exactly how many students there are per major here, but I swear that UX has relatively low numbers. From the UX hangout MS teams chat, we have 47 members, but that includes all the UX faculty also.

The first year in the UX program, at least with trimesters, there’s only two UX related classes per quarter, and two of them aren’t even coded UX or TC. (that’s technical communications for the uninitiated)

Let me tell you, this changes after your first year. Now I’m starting to recognize the same people in my classes.

I made the mistake of not talking to any of them.

My roommates are different majors so I can’t get any of them in my classes, and by not talking to actual people in my major, I don’t have any friends in my classes. Of course I can make the nice nice with people I sit next to, like I’ve been taught in my dreaded social skills classes, but I don’t talk to them outside of class.

If you’re normally good at talking with people, I still advise you to get started on making UX friends early. If you’re normally bad at talking with people, please try your hardest to talk to people. I managed to ask the only other UX freshman for his snapchat in week 6 of fall quarter, and even then I like never talked to them!

Maybe once for peer feedback on a visual design assignment, but that’s the lamest excuse for talking to someone in your major. Making friends in your UX classes is gonna help you, mmkay, because you are going to be seeing the same people, in the same year of UX as you, over and over again in your classes because there is at most, two sections of the classes you’re required to take.

The MSOE courses of the UX program are basically forcing you to get to know the same seven people.

If I actually talked to the people sitting in the room with me during the UX Welcome Week meeting, like asked for their snapchats or something so I could get to know them, I don’t even know what I would be feeling right now. Perhaps I would have more people to talk to, other than the people I share a dorm with.

And you know, there’s only so much time you can spend with some people before you have to take a break from them. Having friends that are IN MY MAJOR would definitely have made my first year go smoother, especially when there was a lot of drama in the only friend group I had here.

UX freshman. Please. Make friends in your major.

The only people I talk to in my freshman studies and math classes here, even sometimes electives that UX freshman have to take, are not in my major. You get tired of having to explain what user experience is to people.

You know that one psych theory that shared negative experiences lead to identity fusion? For example, like coworkers getting close because their job sucks and they all had to deal with it together?

This still happens in the freshman studies classes and math classes, but I missed out on having that experience with my fellow first year UXers because I never talk to them! There aren’t many UX majors here, compared to other majors like AE or ME, or some other more ‘in your face’ STEM majors that don’t necessarily interest me.

You will relate to other UX majors better than you will relate to random engineering majors.

Especially if your “friends” like to make fun of you because user experience isn’t “real engineering”. Sidebar, that’s like the only ammo they have against me. I’m so much better at playful banter than them it’s not even funny.

Okay, so, the point of making UX friends is to have someone you can gossip about things in your shared classes. I’ve had the opportunity to do that maybe once when I shared an elevator with UXers in my visual design class. It was so fun.

Why didn’t I make friends within my major at the beginning of the year?

One of those girls I chatted with offered me review materials for our Cultural Anthropology class during our Visual Design class. Blew my mind. Like, if I’d made friends with my fellow first year UXers, I would be able to study with them! Whatt!!

In the cultural anthropology class (which is required for the UX program by the way, look it up), nobody shared their majors at all during the first day with the mandatory ‘hi my name is’-so do you think I’m going to strike up a conversation with someone who is three years above me and not even in my major? I don’t think so.

We might have some basic identity fusion or basis for a basic conversation about being MSOE students, but then it’s a crapshoot if we actually have anything else in common.

So make friends with the UX people in your year, whether they be actual freshmen, or people that switched majors partly into their time at MSOE.

Spoiler alert, if your incoming class is anything like mine, there’s going to be very few actual UX freshman. Allegedly, the marketing people forgot to advertise the UX program during my senior year of high school, so that’s why my freshman year of college there was only two freshmen for UX. Allegedly.

Having UX friends will give you buddies to study with for your shared classes, gives you more gossiping partners, and will make it easier to endure the classes you’re forced to take together.

Please. As a old freshman speaking to baby freshmen, make friends in your UX major. We’re not even the newest major here at MSOE, that’s Computer Science.

Speaking of, the UX program requires a science elective, and I took physics my spring quarter.

The professor asked what major you were on a math/science background survey before class, and he listed a bunch of the real STEM fields like AE and ME, you know, those majors that will have like no women in the classes. He had CE and CS listed there, but no UX. It was a multiple choice question, there was no place for me to put in UX. He put CS on there!! And didn’t put UX!!

This is why we UX majors need to stick together.

The identity fusion will make us closer, and we’ll be the smartest and sexiest major here.

So, UX freshmen. Make friends in your UX classes because you’re going to be seeing them a lot. There aren’t many of us, so make them count. Go get ‘em tiger. You got this.