My journey from literature to jewellery making
WHEN I was younger, I always enjoyed making things, whether it was food, paintings to hang in my bedroom, or little bowls made from the dirt in my yard. I loved reading and stories.
My parents made sure our lives were filled with imagination and magic and countless stories, written and unwritten. I never had a consistent idea of what I wanted to be when I grew up. I used to say teacher, then I said chef, and then engineer or architect or environmentalist, finally landing on writer or curator.
Up to the end of high school, I was constantly confronted with the idea that you needed to figure out what you wanted to be, and on top of that, I realised that in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, the conventional school system was encouraging us to view the sciences as important and the arts as fun hobbies and supernumerary or extracurricular subjects and activities. It was clear to me that it was widely believed that to achieve the pinnacle of success, you needed to pursue the sciences, and if you pursued anything within the humanities, it was to land you with a job title such as ‘lawyer’.
SIXTH FORM
By the time I reached sixth form, I was confused. I had been doing primarily science-based subjects for five years (hating them, although producing good grades) while being involved in the arts in my free time – reading books, playing instruments, making things. As I approached the end of my high-school life, I realised I probably needed to wise up and make serious decisions about the direction of my future.
That was when I decided to do CAPE literature. After spending two years of sixth form enjoying literature and rarely any of my other subjects, I thought, “You definitely need to study something in the Humanities at university.”
I went to The University of the West Indies, Mona, for a Bachelor of Arts in literatures in English because I knew I was interested in books and the art of writing, and I liked the creativity that a degree