Meet our MFA Design candidates for 2012. We asked them to answer the following:

1. What was noteworthy about your first year at MFAD?
   2. What is your favorite NYC experience?
   3. What was your favorite assignment was from first year?
   Here are Elisa Bates's responses:

2. My first year at MFAD was an eye-opening, mind-awakening experience that shook up my personal design world and expanded an awareness of greater creative possibilities. Also, I learned how to function on much less sleep.

3. My favorite NYC experiences by decade: the 80's: skipping the senior prom and instead dining with my date at Tavern on the Green and afterward "clubbing" at Danceteria and The Ritz; the 90's: wandering into a strange video shoot on the lower east side in an abandoned building at 3am; the 00's: meeting my future husband at a "Pimp and Ho" loft party.

4. My favorite assignment from the first year was from Stefan Sagmeister's class where we had to come up with a sentence describing something in life we've learned so far and then typographically design it. I chose to display my wisdom through a stop-motion video using 500 tea light candles to spell out the phrase "It's better to be ambitious than competitive." In addition, I learned that lighting 500 candles at once should not be done in one's apartment for fear of setting the place on fire.