Week 1: Joel Arellano – Introduction

Bio

In high school, I tried mock trial and loved the ability to present a narrative on my own terms, crafting allegory and conjuring associations designed to leave the jury with a clear vision of our story. From then on I began to consider law school seriously, because I wanted to pursue the use of strategic narrative and language.

In college, I fluctuated between Journalism and Psychology before settling on Philosophy. I loved the critical thinking philosophy requires, and even though I’m no longer planning on law as a career, I’d make the same choice again because it helped me develop the values and critical constructs that are central to who I am and how I understand the world. Plus, philosophy taught me to critically examine language.

Following college, I wanted to see how much of the abstract theories I’d learned could be applied in real life, plus I wanted to challenge myself in diverse environments, so I taught English in Thailand and Turkey for a few years before settling back into Portland and preparing for law school. Upon my return, I learned about the StratComm program and immediately recognized that was the only aspect of law that intrigued me, so here I am! I presently work as an account manager for a local software startup, and I hope through StratComm to find work in UX or otherwise help manage design projects. Ad work would be cool, too.

Purpose

The most compelling ideas I’ve encountered have to do with the impact of design. I recall reading Lee Siegel’s review of Eyes Wide Shut in high school being stunned by his revelatory distinction between passive and active entertainment. The revelation was striking, and it has greatly enriched the way I see at creative work. Neitzsche’s essays contra Wagner offer perhaps the clearest statement of the concept: bad entertainment is damaging, but good entertainment improves every part of our community.

I’m still enthralled by this dichotomy and I find it everywhere- from Nichomachean Ethics to Pound (“If a nation’s literature declines, the nation atrophies and decays”). Infinite Jest illustrates this point by examining the annular relationship between social well-being and the quality of entertainment, adding that our mutually-determining habits and free will shape the quality of entertainment we seek. Good design is the common thread among many works I love, and they’ve pointed me to the same conclusion: good design is a civic responsibility.

My conviction about the value of design is what drives me to study Strategic Communication. Interrogating the design of a message or object intrigues me- I enjoy deconstructing them, understanding the functions of their parts and then deploying that knowledge for a purpose. Apple does this by merging user experience and product design development. As a result, their products continue to elevate expectations and demand for design quality across industries and the world. I want to contribute to that process.