That’s what one of my deskmates said aloud while out to lunch a few weeks ago trying to brainstorm new project ideas. He’s a former student at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program; I moonlight teaching at Parsons’ Design + Technology program. Both programs are difficult for me to describe in spite of how amazing they are. Graduates have gone on to found interactive installation agencies or created celebrated indy games. They’ve designed beautiful digital products for large agencies and told wonderful stories through interactivity. They are experimenters, artists, tinkerers, designers, curiosities.

Some students come in with existing experience in design, code, or electronics when they first enter their programs. Many do not. While both schools have esteemed faculty, the students’ interests are so wide and varied that the onus is on the individual to teach themselves whatever it is they need to learn to realize their ideas. These students haven’t put in enough raw hours to assess the difficulty of a challenge. Their vision isn’t clouded by expertise. They charge in headstrong, and the resulting output is often incredible and wonderful.

It’s rare when someone comes out of these programs magically incredible at anything specific. Two years of scrambling madly to learn how to build something from nothing is hardly going to generate rock-star designers or coders. Perhaps that’s not the point. Maybe knowing how to make everything makes it that much harder to make anything great.