In Which I Write a Letter to Myself in the Future From Myself in
the Past  Dear Future Mitch,  This is Mitch (you) in graduate
school. Right now, I am in our first year of the MFA in Visual
Communications program at Virginia Commonwealth University, and
I am writing you this letter to remind you to think about your
role as a designer, educator and critic. I recently finished
Sandra Wheeler’s Survey of Design Criticism seminar, and she
suggested I do this. Sandy says hi by the way.  It is time to
consider a big question: how are you going to wear all three
hats of designer, educator and critic? In some ways they are
nearly the same thing, and in other ways they are vastly
different. You need to decide what it is to be a design critic
who is also a practicing designer and a design educator. You
read many things in that seminar class, written by many critics
from the greats like Walter Benjamin and Herbert Muschamp, to
the newer voices like Rob Giampetro and Alexandra Lange. It is
time to ask ourself this: what