Graduating graphic artist frets about real-world anxiety

Southeast Missouri State University art student Robert Stahlinski of Boston is getting ready to present his senior-year graphic design project, a centerpiece of his five-year college career. You can view his work starting today, when the university art department's Graduating Seniors Exhibition opens with a reception from 4 to 6 p.m.

For this project, the designer went all-out, creating menus, matchbooks, T-shirts and even designing a vodka bottle for Junktion, his fictitious vodka bar for young professionals, inspired by his coming transition out of college and his desire to create a professional-looking product.

Earlier this week Stahlinski made time to talk with the Southeast Missourian about the perils of being a graphic artist facing the prospect of graduating and life in the "real world."

Q: So what's the next step in life after you graduate?

A: I'm not sure. It's kind of scary. Here I am, $40,000 in debt on student loans.

Robert Stahlinski discussed his art exhibit at the Southeast Missouri Regional Museum. (Fred Lynch)

Q: Tell me a little bit about your project.

A: I'm going to be out in the real world pretty soon, and all these kids who go out in the real world, they usually go to one particular place ... after work. So I geared this toward that age group of young professionals. I made a product, this place makes vodka. It's easy to make, just grain, a little potato, and you've got vodka.

Q: So what are the prospects for a graphic designer?

A: When the economy is good, you're the first to get hired. When it's bad, you're the first to get fired.

I met a few guys in my internship that worked with graphic design companies ... and they would tell me sometimes you'd not sleep for a week just putting the stuff out. That's not good. Especially for me. When I get in a zone, I'm focused, I'm in there, and it's hard to break myself away from it.

That's who I am, I'm a designer. But I'm starting to think that maybe I should branch out to something else. I love to work out, I used to be into bodybuilding ... I know a lot about the body, and I'm thinking maybe after I graduate I go out and find a job and I work as a graphic designer for a few years, maybe actually go back to school and get a degree in something totally and completely different. Maybe I should become a personal trainer. Why not? I think people need that. I think if you graduate from college, you think, this is my degree. I spent four, five, six, eight years getting it. That's who I'm going to become, you're locked into that, then you're going to wake up a few years later, and that's who you are, you're nothing else.

You feel you can't become anyone else, then you're stuck, and that's when your midlife crisis hits, and people start to freak out.

Q: Why does the nine-to-five sort of life scare you so much?

A: Because I don't want to be in that zone. I don't want to go home and work nine to five, then come home and sleep and wake up and it's nine to five again. The only freedoms that I have is on the weekends, and now I've got to find a hobby. The thing that scares me the most is in college I'm so busy. I'm active in a fraternity, I have projects for class. ... I have a great social life, but when I go back home, what do I have to fill that void other than a job?

I have to go out and find something to do, and that can be scary. I also don't want to wake up one day and realize my whole life amounts to a nine to five job and that's it. Who wants to realize that? Realizing that now, with a few weeks left, then having to be put in that situation is really freaky.

msanders@semissourian.com

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