Like many new UXers, I started my UX journey in February 2020 by enrolling in a UX/UI boot camp. I was still in college, so I would attend my undergrad classes in the mornings and the boot camp courses in the evenings and weekends, hosted at another college an hour’s bus ride away. After graduating from the UX/UI boot camp, I dove head-first into internships and freelancing while trying to finish my undergrad degree.

Two years after my boot camp and I find myself graduating next year, preparing for my third internship, freelancing throughout the school year —

— All before my 21st birthday.

As I’ve said in previous posts, it’s been a wild and unpredictable ride as a UX designer. Since most of my success is credited to other designers who have freely shared their insights online, I thought it’s only fair to do the same.

Listed below are a few things I’ve discovered throughout this past year as I’ve freelanced, been interviewed, and expanded my knowledge of UX design:

Failure is your wingman

Most of my experience up to this point involves failing in some form or fashion. It’s hard (and somewhat counterproductive) marketing your mistakes as reasons you’re a great candidate for hire, though. During the job interview for my most recent internship, my manager asked me about a project I worked on during a previous internship — one that fell apart due to miscommunications, micromanaging, and poor time management.

When the interviewer asked, I laughed it off, took a deep breath, and started explaining the project first saying, “This project was a complete failure.” This caught the interviewer off guard a little, but once I began to explain how it failed and how I’ve taken those failures as a lesson for my future work, they seemed a little less wary about my previous internship. I certainly wasn’t proud the project failed, but by being honest about what happened I was able to show how I reflect on past mistakes and use them to be better prepared for the future.

Failure can be your wingman (or wingwoman, or wingperson) at times. Certainly not the type of wingman you’d prefer to make you seem flashy and savvy, but in a pinch they can still work wonders for wooing.

Find a mentor (or a few)

My goodness, I cannot speak more highly of career mentors! Finding a compatible and approachable UX mentor is life-changing.

A few months ago, I was in a very strange freelancing position where I knew I was head over heels in responsibilities above my experience level and pay grade. I wanted a mentor to help me navigate that one freelance predicament, but after that was resolved we continued meeting to discuss the next steps for my career because we just got along together so well.

Mentors aren’t directly tied to your success (like managers or coworkers are), which is why they are one of the best ways to find objective, clear, and experienced advice that is intended to help you. Mentoring can be as official or laid-back, frequent or sparse as you or your mentor would like. However, it can be very expensive, depending on your location and mentoring needs. There are many resources and mentorship platforms that help curb the cost of mentoring, and while I haven’t tried any of them, ADPList, are fairly reputable.

Pains and gains of a T-shaped skill set

Marketing myself as a designer who specializes in web accessibility and design systems has allowed my portfolio and resume to stand out among other designers, especially if it’s for a gig centered around either of those subjects. However, it takes time, dedication, and sometimes money to build yourself as a T-shaped designer (and I am certainly not at the level of expertise I’d like to be). Even though it’s quite a challenge to build enough experience to call yourself an ‘expert’ in one specific skill set, a T-shaped skill set is astronomically easier to build than becoming a proper unicorn designer (it’s also harder to market yourself as a unicorn designer).

While specializing in a specific skill set (or skill sets) can limit the potential job openings available to your expertise, the job openings that are within your T-ness will be easier to grab.

Experience vs. wisdom

Experience does not (or at least should not) equate to wisdom. I understand some colloquial definitions of experience can lend themselves to mean something close to wisdom, especially within job descriptions. That said, it’s important to realize that experience (as in the amount of time you’ve been doing something) is different than wisdom (insights built through gaining perspective and insight on previous experiences).

Having more experience can afford better wisdom. But wisdom just doesn’t come through just gaining more experience. If you don’t take some time to reflect and gain perspective on all your years working on UX projects, audits, and working with clients or coworkers, then your experience is worth no more than your salary and job benefits.

Through the work I’ve done with my career mentor, I’ve had the ability to gain a little bit of wisdom and perspective on my experience as a UX designer. Without that ability to step back and really process all that’s happened within the past two years, I highly doubt I’d be able to understand what my next career moves should be after graduating. Of course, wisdom isn’t foolproof and it can be largely biased by your own personal assumptions, but at least wisdom is an attempt to develop some more refined and deeper insight into what you’ve had the opportunity to achieve.

No matter how you started, where you started, or how many busses you rode in order to get to your boot camp classes (if any), it’s your experience, your story to own.

Everyone’s story will vary when it comes to how they broke into their UX and/or UI careers, or how they managed to recover after failing. That’s what makes your experience (and wisdom) so special, and so important to share with others.