I'm a Zillennial embracing this new role of adjunct lecturer, while fueling my creative mindset and spirit. Is it working?

"So what are we planning to do after after grad school?"

"I'd like to freelance and focus on my business."

"That's great, but isn't really freelancing a bit challenging right now?"

"It is... I'll keep looking for other jobs... it is indeed pretty scary out there..."

"We saw the past mentorship program you conducted and the overall initiatives you're doing at Fashion On The Beat (FOTB). Why can't you apply that in the classroom?"

"You mean... teaching at a college level? Me?"

"Yes. You're PhD material, but you've got this creative and entrepreneurial spirit... give it a chance, inspire someone!"

I honestly never saw myself as a teacher, college professor, or instructor. This past spring was a fast-paces season, full of achievements and victories on my end, but so intense in all senses. Every activity I was involved in kept sending me subliminal messages and life lessons. From senior faculty conversations, friends and freelance colleagues within the fashion media industry to my family and partner's point of view, I was pulled in different and many directions. No one knows me better than myself, and I came to the conclusion that if I still wanted to live close by the love of my life, savor more bites of financial (and mental) freedom from my family, and keep my business alive while still being a part-time business owner, I had to indeed explore non-familiar avenues to support myself and my future plans. That is why a career in education seemed at first the most logical answer to give myself. I ended up enjoying it more than I thought I would, though. 

It had never hit me that through FOTB - as an editor and CEO - I had gathered some kind of substantial mentorship and teaching experience, which I could expand more under another institution and title (adjunct lecturer). Clearly managing a media start-up an leading two classrooms are not the same thing, but one can surely help the other. 

Due to the familiarity I had with the target audience and the branding voice of FOTB, writing an academic program (syllabus) centered on my main passion (fashion literature) wasn't a challenge per se. The major obstacle I had was what topics, concepts, and authors could first-year students be ever interested in, have I never really interacted in person with younger Zillennials other than those I had for shorter amount of time (one-day workshops, besides my mentees at FOTB). Considering my grad work (Africana Studies) and capstone project (The Self-Representation of Black Fashion Media Professionals in Italy), I thought of leveraging my then-upcoming position by proposing exclusively Black modern authors, each one from different backgrounds and Africana heritages. For this reason I chose to explore the stories, portfolios, and media profiles of African-American journalist Elaine Welteroth ("More Than Enough"), British-Ghanian editor and stylist Edward Enninful ("A Visible Man"), and Canadian-Ghanian fashion designer and entrepreneur  Aurora James ("Wildflower: A Memoir").

Even though the students enrolled in a prevalent STEM-oriented university, a good portion of them come from relatable realities like the ones lived by the authors. Some of these students are also very young for improving their soft skills, especially those who would like to hone more into their creative and entrepreneurial aspirations. 

The course ended up being titled "Fashion Media Literacy and College Orientation." Due to the nature of this course I had to insert a series of modules that share resources related to the campus and other similar pedagogical content, but I was free to use any book and topic to introduce students during their very first college semester. We've been talking about pop culture. We've been discussing about sustainable fashion. We've been reading portions of the books we covered about taking worthy risks in life, unconscious bias, the immigrant experience, and how to cultivate a creative mindset to get through college. 

I believe in working smarter, not necessarily harder. The uncomfortable and depressing situations I was put in, from people taking advantage of my international student status to hundreds of rejections from once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, made me stronger and more empathic to the BIPOC community. I used my journey as an example of unexpected success and other models of success in front of the students, showing them the reality of a creative's timeline. Due to my past I had to experiment creative skills within pragmatic contexts that could help me become independent an financially stable while living by myself in NYC. I didn't give up my creative spirit, but I had to be strategic about it. Creativity is about getting strategic with the lack of resources, ideas, and solutions in front of you. Anyone can be creative, it's up to each one of us to cultivate this mindset and apply it in our fields. I myself learned bits of life lessons and industry dynamics through Edward, Elaine, and Aurora's words. At this point I am fully aware of the impact that I've been leaving on students, but also on faculty members. Not a lot of them will become fashion designers, editors, or entrepreneurs, but at least I presented them an option with a pragmatic and attainable skillset and real heartfelt examples.

I'm the only an youngest Black Italian woman to have offered a course like this under the department of Arts and Humanities within the CUNY circuit. Students who had no idea of what Vogue is or what even a journalist is, now have been exposed to a curated array of professional media, high-quality fashion content, and impactful initiatives - from Vogue to AMAKA Studio, from The Fifteen Percent Pledge and Consumption Project, to mention some. 

It was always under my own impression that I would have been working full-time in a media company or startup reality, but life apparently is throwing at me other adventures. I thought that I could never maintain a pure creative spirit while in academia, but I guess that I was wrong. My creativity, as a skill and intellectual framework, is more vivid and colorful than ever.