Music is playing lightly through her headphones. She works away her time on a computer, creating inspirational and amazing graphics, for anything that is asked of her. Junior Grace Eaton has shown her talent in Graphic Design enough to have the opportunity to learn more about her passion 1,656 miles away from home.

Eaton applied for a graphic design summer institute program in Philadelphia, called The Pre-College Summer Intensive at the University of the Arts. She said the program takes place over the summer and lasts about four weeks, and is full of different learning processes and helpful things that students need to know about going to college, as well as a bullet point on a portfolio for their application.

“I have a lot of worries about applying to colleges during my senior year and if my [graphic design] portfolio will be good enough,” Eaton said. “A lot of this camp is focused around beefing up rising seniors’ portfolios so that we feel prepared to apply to A+D programs for college.”

Eaton has been involved in the graphic design class since she was a sophomore. Her success in her various semesters in the classes have slowly brought Eaton to understand that she is very talented behind a computer screen.

“Graphic design was a topic that I first started learning about in our Intro to Graphic Design class sophomore year,” Eaton said. “I fell in love with how easy it felt to make one design decision that just made all of the pieces fall into place. I love the feeling of nailing a project and feeling proud of something that I had created.”

As far as the summer institute that Eaton will be attending, she said the process of applying to the prestigious school in Philadelphia for this program was a breeze, as the only thing left for her to do is to complete her application for a partial-tuition scholarship.

“I applied about three weeks ago and I got my acceptance [email] just two days after,” Eaton said. “I had to submit an essay about why I wanted to attend the program and what graphic design means to me.”

Eaton will be alongside one of her close friends, junior Brooke Meredith, who was also accepted into the institute, for the length of this summer camp. The experiences that will be brought about from this camp will give Eaton a truly solidifying look into what she would like to do with her life after high school, she said.

“[Now that I’m accepted], I’m really looking forward to that peace of mind and being able to focus on my test scores this spring,” Eaton said. “[Philadelphia] is also pretty far from home, so I’m excited for the independence of living on campus for a month.” 

According to Eaton, this is possibly one of the best opportunities for a graphic design student to have before going to college. She said she is also excited to gain even more knowledge. 

“I’m still learning more about [graphic design] every day,” Eaton said. “I feel like I will never be tired of it, even when I have to redo a poster five times to match the client’s vision.”