It's great to be able to reflect back on events with fresh eyes. I remember learning of Steve Jobs' role in crafting Pixar from hardware company to film studio, in a book entitled The Pixar Touch. The final chapter of Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull, speaks on the importance of Steve's investment of time, energy, opinion, finances, and leadership, and how it helped shape Pixar as a company. After reading that afterwards of Catmull's book, I remembered a quote Steve gave to the New York Times, one week after the first iPad was released back in 2010. This quote that's almost four-years-old has been taped to my animation desk since that time and it reads:

"Great products, according to Mr. Jobs, are triumphs of “taste.” And taste, he explains, is a byproduct of study, observation and being steeped in the culture of the past and present, of “trying to expose yourself to the best things humans have done and then bring those things into what you are doing.”

This statement has been the catalyst to which I've applied myself daily, and has allowed for me to remain diligent and cogitative in my efforts as a student. I feel so fortunate to have had the right set of circumstances appear in my life over these short four years of striving to attend CCA.