Dear Ayako,
I often think about the first time I introduced myself to you. You may not remember or recall this moment but it’s one I am utterly embarrassed by now. It was in an email I sent you, well to your design firm’s email address, wondering if you’d be willing to take me on as an intern. It was before I even had my first class in art school, it was before I even knew who you were, but I was on a mission to land experience and looking back, it was a boring yet pompous note about how I wanted to prove myself to you.
Months later, after arriving on campus, and hearing about you through the grapevine, the shudder of embarrassment set in, which was only replaced by dead fear of being in an actual class with you because your skills were so highly revered by everyone.
My first class with you went by so fast and I don’t know if I even had a chance to truly learn from you but there was this moment in which I knew you were exactly the person I had been looking for all these years.
It was a grey day and I had come in to the ID building to stalk one of your fellow colleagues for advice on a project. You, as extrodinary as you are, were being interviewed for Forbes Japan. In between the shots of your super cool photo shoot in the metal shop, you corrected your colleague on the way he was pronouncing your last name. You were polite and strong and made him repeat it back to you until he got it right.
As small as that moment may have been, it profoundly changed the way I saw the world. I had never corrected anyone on the pronunciation of my name before. I had always made it simpler for people to pronounce, so much so that one year, when I desperately wanted to be on a soccer team in high school (a team with no people of color on it at the time) I briefly agreed to go by an “American name” just to avoid the conversation. It made me ill but mostly it made me a worse player because I didn’t react to the name and missed all the ques from my teammates.
I was lucky enough to have you as a professor a few times throughout my graduate education and have grown even luckier to call you a friend now. I am so grateful to be able to reach out to you on a whim whether it is to seek out profession advice or casually vent to you about racism. Thank you for always being willing to listen and giving the best advice. Thank you for your unyielding help, for answering all the questions, and supporting my decisions in design and in life. Thank you for your kindness but most of all thank you for being relentlessly you. Your words and actions are a lesson to us all in the importance and value in being yourself.
I look up to you in so many ways. From the way you treat your colleagues and friends, the way you care for your students and kids, the way you think, and the way you work when it comes to design and problem solving. You balance complexity with strength and grace and exude a natural vibe of badassery. I respect the way you construct language and your sense of wit. I appreciate how you approach life and allow those principles to define your designs; and I hope to continue to learn from you in the many years to come.
Thank you for being the role model I needed, the teacher I wanted, and the mentor I am lucky to have.
love,
-a life long student of yours
Dear Maverick 