This month, design students will graduate from college and enter the professional world—congratulations to them all! Though my matriculation occurred ages ago, I've had the pleasure of talking to a few promising new grads entering the workforce and share my experience with them. I thought it'd be helpful to share a few insights and thoughts with those who might be in relatable situations. A gentle reminder that I don't believe in giving direct advice. My hope is sharing my point of view and experience might be helpful in how you make your own decisions—the path I took might be drastically different than the one you need to.

It was 18 years ago when I was in a similar position as the new grads; full of optimism and excitement of what is to come in the real world. I graduated with a BFA in Studio Art with a focus on Drawing and Painting. I was an elective machine and nearly earned minored in Art History, Humanities, and Computer Science. It was the kind of multi-disciplinary study Ajax makes you think of both the JavaScript request to partially load a page or the giant and mighty Achaean warrior from The Iliad. When I say was in a similar position as these new grads as history eerily repeats itself. I entered a workforce during one of the worst markets: an economic recession, political strife, and high tension in the Middle East. The optimism faded fast as my classmates and I were in for a rude awakening on what post-graduation would look like.

Walking and graduating quickly turned into being a sea turtle hatchling racing to the sea. Only 1 in 1,000 hatchling turtles make it to adulthood. Of my graduating class, I can only count on one hand how many are still in design, and many never landed a design role.

A hard lesson was learned quickly: the real world does not respect any entitlement that you should automatically land a professional role because you studied it for a few years. It turns out I was one of the many sea turtle hatchlings disparately trying to make it to sea—a job to start a career in design. It did not take weeks to land a role, nor months, but years. It was working a day job to pay the bills, trying to learn being an adult, and building up a portfolio to avoid the all-too-familiar rejection email right after I submitted an my application.

Before I landed my first tech role at ExactTarget, I applied to about 300 jobs with only a slither of them ever calling me back for an initial interviews. Is it demoralizing to get rejected hundreds of times right after you just applied to a job? Of course. It sucks. However, some people give up right as they have a breakthrough.

If you apply for 300 jobs, the 301st application might be the one that gets you hired. Despite the hundreds of painful rejections, remember it only takes one person to say yes. I’m forever grateful for Bret Brewer to be that person for me; giving me the chance to show what I can do.

We only want to hear about the promotions. Nobody talks about the work it took to earn it and persevering through rejected promotion cycles. One of my favorite commercials of all-time is Michael Jordan's "Failure" commercial.

I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

Like dating, finding a role is a numbers game and in a recession you need to try not only harder and more, but understand what isn't working.

What I learned along the way

Once you land your first role, congrats. The two hardest arcs in design careers are going from individual contributor to manager and getting into design in the first place—huge accomplishment. I’m trying to distill 18 years in an unordered list of things to keep in mind as you develop in your career.

• Learn to be professional: Maturity and professionalism goes a long way. Taking your craft seriously doesn’t mean you have to be a boring stiff. There is a time and place to have fun but being a professional is equally an important skill.

• Be exceptional at one thing: Even if you’re a generalist, find the one skill or value you bring that will elevate a design team. That will stand out to the hiring team.

• Focus on craft: Career progression is like earning achievements in a video game. The more you harp on the specific levels and work on only that, the more distracted you’ll be. You’ll miss out on the joy of playing the game, connecting with people, and getting better at playing. It’s important to think of career, but not until you are proven in your craft.

• Don’t harp on company logos: It might be tempting to compare where your colleagues are joining and be self conscious about it. Big company logos don’t matter as much as you think.

• Be grounded in the real world: Reality is different than what we idealize it should be. It sucks, but is inevitability. You are going to have a rude awakening if you expect the happy path happen to you and everyone around you. The world is not fair, it discriminates, and exploits you. If you can’t get past accepting it, you will not be able to affect change. Start with reality before philosophy.

Now, go change the world

The intention of writing this is not to discourage new grads—quite the contrary. I hope it gives people a sense of the reality and how hard it really is to break into design. My four years of college were transformative for my worldview and what I believed. Idealism is like the happy path of design. It’s important to plot the north star but execute in the confines of the real world. Like a piece of software, the world has debt: systemic discrimination, unfairness, and broken systems passed through multiple generations. Being idealistic and expecting to start from a blue sky vision to change things overnight isn't idealistic. It's delusional.

We are counting on you to affect change in the real world based on the ideals you learned. Ship your ideals.