Defining success can be tricky, because success can take many different forms. At TC3, success often is in the form of helping a student realize what they want to do and helping them get there. With Deimos Matei, the first step was already taken – there never was help needed discovering a final goal. Matei came to TC3 knowing exactly what they wanted, and TC3 helped make it happen.

TC3 really prepared me to jump headfirst into the next three years of my education at SCAD and perform to the best of my ability.

 

You came to TC3 with a very defined career goal. How did you decide that? My goal is to do costume design for film & TV—specifically anything on the more fantastical side of things. I grew up loving Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and anything high fantasy. I had a moment when I was around 15 where I became aware of Michele Clapton’s work on Game of Thrones (without having watched a single episode) and found that I really understood her design process and everything just fell into place. Hearing someone articulate the decisions behind their designs and then having the setting and team to realize those concepts to the degree that the show did was a huge inspiration to me and made me realize that that was what I wanted to do.

Why did you choose to attend Tompkins Cortland? I picked out very early on what college I wanted to study costume design at—the Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD) in Georgia. I spent a long time running the numbers to see how I could make it work. TC3 was a cost-effective option to get my prerequisite and foundational classes completed. It also allowed me to stay at home and keep working as I started my journey into higher education which was an important aspect to me because I never finished traditional high school, having dropped out at 15 and then gotten a GED. I really wasn’t sure how I would fare in a school setting again and TC3 offered the ability to work towards my goals while also testing the waters.

How did your college experience at TC3 prepare you for SCAD and your career journey? Because I had dropped out of high school I really wasn’t sure how I would fare in a school setting again after five years out of it. TC3 was an accessible entry point for me. I think the biggest thing I got from my time at TC3 was a renewed understanding of how I operate in educational settings and understanding how I need to structure my education to produce the best work. My year at TC3 really prepared me to jump headfirst into the next three years of my education at SCAD and perform to the best of my ability.

Who at TC3 had the greatest positive impact on your experience or your future? English Professor Kerry Curran. I took a class on Shakespeare with her in the spring as an elective with absolutely zero feelings on the topic. It ended up being a wonderful class and now as I enter my senior year at SCAD I am preparing to embark on my undergrad thesis project on Macbeth, a continuation of a project I did in Kerry’s class. In a way, my whole thesis is due to her.

Hal Pietros-Brown, one of the student success advisors, was also especially helpful. He was extremely helpful as a second set of eyes looking over my plans to transfer, everything I was doing in between, and reassuring me that I was doing everything I could to make as smooth of a transition as possible. He really eased a lot of my anxieties and worries about the process.

What are some of your favorite memories from TC3? I honestly really just enjoyed a lot of my classes and my professors. I made a handful of good friends and always look back on my time spent at TC3 with fondness. It’s really just a thousand little vignettes. In Kerry’s Shakespeare class I would play spooky piano riffs on the baby grand that was in our classroom before we started our next discussion on Macbeth. I painted the Mona Lisa to use as a prop in a speech about the 1911 theft of the painting in my public speaking course, much to my classmate’s delight. My creative writing class was an absolute blast and was such a great group of people to swap ideas with even though we could never figure out how the tables were supposed to be arranged after we messed them up.

Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give to yourself when you started at TC3? Just try. You have to try that next step, you have to try revisiting this environment, you have to try to get where you’re going. The universe isn’t going to drop the opportunity in your lap; you have to make all the little things happen first.

You transferred to one of the top schools in your field, and you have had some pretty amazing experiences at SCAD. I’ve had so many wonderful experiences at SCAD over the past two years. I’ve absolutely loved getting to participate in student films; there really is nothing like getting to work with a team of people to create something that’s impossible to do on your own. Even getting to just observe the different departments on set and watch how they do their thing is fascinating. This past school year (2024-25) I had the amazing opportunity to work on SCAD’s winter play with a team of my peers under costume designer Janie Bryant, who was the costume designer for Mad Men (2007–15), Deadwood (2004–06), 1923 (2022–25), etc. So that was an incredible experience. I really can’t wait to see what this year brings with it. I will be graduating with my BFA in May of 2026. I’m still figuring out exactly what comes next, but fingers crossed for something exciting!