After presenting a workshop in New York last month, I took a hike across the Brooklyn Bridge to view Olafur Eliasson’s New York City Waterfalls.

Stepping into Brooklyn also gave me the chance to catch up with Alissa Walker, one of my favorite PC alums. Early this summer, Alissa left the rarefied air of Hollywood for three months in the NYC area, working on a travel book for Chronicle.

Alissa is fun to be around. I love her passion for writing, hunger for learning and quest for new experiences. She honed those traits as a student, and she relies on them in her career.

After graduating from PC, Alissa worked for an ad agency, then a video production firm. She moved on to freelance, writing for and about design. She also became co-editor for the acclaimed blog, Unbeige. She’s now hatched her own blog, Gelatobaby, and is writing the Chronicle book.

Alissa has already found glory, and her star will glow even brighter in the future, because she gets it. You would have to hold her in a headlock to keep her from rushing into new territory and trying new things. She knows writing is about much more than spraying words on paper. It’s about exploring and discovery.

“I’ve never written a book about a subject I knew much about,” says historical writer David McCullough, author of Truman, 1776 and John Adams. “In fact, if I knew much about it, I wouldn’t want to write the book. Writing to me is about discovery – about the joy of learning.”

That’s exactly what I believe writers and all other students have a chance to embrace at Portfolio Center. The joys of learning. The pleasures of discovery. The treasures of exploration.

And you’ll recognize these findings in the velocity of their creativity.

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