Photo: Jess Camacho

Michelle Lee (Post-Baccalaureate Certificate ’08) considers herself a fairly practical person. That was one of her reasons for studying computer science at Brandeis University. But then she took some art classes, and she was hooked. “I really struggled with the decision to switch,” she says. “Being an artist is not practical. Being a computer science major is really practical. Jobs are a lot easier to find.”

Fortunately, Lee has hit upon a way to straddle both worlds: graphic design. After finishing college with a degree in fine arts in 2004, she spent one year in Japan teaching English and working as a Baptist missionary, and two as a designer for a commercial real-estate company in Boston. “I made a lot of maps,” Lee says. It was a far cry from the oil-painting she had done in college. “There were design elements to it, but I felt I needed to do more art,” she says.

At the Museum School she is focusing on courses in Text and Image Arts: learning new technologies, refining her techniques, and building her portfolio with an eye toward jobs at advertising agencies or marketing firms. “I’m pretty open to anything that allows me to be creative,” she says. “I like client-based work. I’m a person of boundaries. I like having guidelines to follow.” In a perfect world, though, Lee would stay in school forever. “I love being surrounded by artists and so many different types of art and ideas,” she says.

While she may be drawn to computer art—“it feels easy and natural to me,” she says—Lee finds that the high-tech world has its limits. “The computer can be really impersonal,” she says. “I like print materials. I like being able to hold things in my hand and feel them and see them. I guess in that way I’m a traditional person.”