Anastasia Mounce: determined for excellence

BY JAXON HANSARD / Sports Editor 

Anastasia Mounce is a digital media studies major from Granbury, Texas. When arriving at Tarleton State University in 2021, Mounce knew what degree she wanted to pursue and was sure to get it as soon as she could. 

“I’m kind of one of those people that needs to be focused to do well and things,” Mounce said. 

Upon becoming a Tarleton Texan, she was sure to get a job and get to her classes to learn. Mounce started working in an internship with Mr. Ireland, who is the department head of visual arts and design. She started with making graphics, setting up the gallery, managing the computer lab and assisting anyone in the fine arts building if needed. 

Mounce credits her family's mindset of hustle culture to how she was able to start working and eventually add extra classes to her semesters. 

“I wanted to get a job because that’s kind of the mindset of my family, always work,” Mounce said. “I guess a little bit of the quote-unquote hustle culture.”

Because of Mounce’s help and constant presence in the fine arts building, she found herself involved in the College of Liberal and Fine Arts (COLFA) Student Council. 

In the COLFA Student Council, Mounce would help by taking students' suggestions and presenting them to the fine arts department to help improve the COLFA. It was important to her that this was helpful and to make sure that the student's voices were actually heard, so the department staff wasn’t just blindly guessing what students would want. Mounce would work as an intern for the city of Granbury with the communications team and economics team.  

Mounce has always been independent with her goal in mind. She wants to become a 3D modeler. This has always been her end goal, and all of her choices through college have reflected that. 

“I wanted to get more on a schedule that was not in a like community,” Mounce said. “I wanted to like pursue things solo.” 

Anastasia has been taking extra classes to graduate sooner, while also taking an interest in the artistic design world so she could become more prepared and familiar with a potential career she has been working to pursue. She wants to work for a company that will put her in contact with other companies so that she can learn the corporate world. The higher stakes of working in a big city at big buildings particularly interest Anastasia because of the high speeds and the cash flow of their work. 

“I'm not doing anything better with my life at the moment so I kind of started adding more classes to get out earlier,” Mounce said

Anastasia has a competitive spirit of herself that stems from her family's “hustle culture” and her sibling rivalry with her brother. As siblings do, they were always trying to beat each other in whatever they were doing. Everything from growing up doing art competitions, academically ascending and then honing on that skill through band competitions later in life. The desire to simply just compete overtakes that all, just to try something and to learn and improve on a skill or desire has motivated Anastasia to have such personal achievements as having a great GPA. 

“Your skills equal to time equals to money that you get or how useful you are in this industry” Mounce said.

Having such great grades isn’t seen as much of an achievement because of her competitive mindset and belief in herself to be excellent. 

“I would say it is not my achievement because in my family, it is expected, I'm not surprised because in my family we all work hard,” Mounce said. 

She’s very self-aware comparing her GPA to a social achievement but claiming that it wasn’t as meaningful to her because it wasn’t creative. Being self-aware of her own personal growth and realization of her life is something she is proud of. 

Every class she has taken has been with the intent of becoming a 3D modeler at her own pace. She did not want her goals and aspirations to be pushed to the side because of a class group, something she learned in high school. 

“In the real world, you going to have to manage yourself and you’re going to have to know how to manage a group and be a part of groups and manage others,” Mounce said.

The flexibility of graphic design is a great thing that Anastasia is looking forward to when furthering her education in graphic design. 

“The other day I went to the bank, and that's exactly what they were doing,” Mounce said. “It was designing everything that they needed, which I thought was cool. It’s just that’s why I chose this occupation because it's in any industry sort of but no industry at the same time,” Mounce said. 

Mounce believes that her studies will allow her to be flexible and have a variety of options to choose from when it comes to her career. 

“I don’t think that my career path has to be set in stone in only graphic design. It can be anything from illustration, communication, editing, game design or you know 3D modeling,” Mounce said. 

Mounce plans to go to Texas A&M University and get her master’s degree in 3D modeling. 

“Overall I think my time here was well spent, I'm thinking about my next steps, not immediately after, but I guess they're linked somehow,” Mounce said.