Present Joys

I showed up for motion graphics on monday. A half hour went by and our teacher didn’t show up, so I took a group photo of the whole class and passed around a home-made sign-in sheet. Everybody left except me, John, Luke, and Alix, so we sat around and did homework and complained about Directions.

Tuesday, had jewelry; stressfully realized deadlines are closing in on me. I worked on jewelry through lunch, giving myself countless small injuries in the meantime. After that, senior ad was great. I went to interview Ron Tardino at 3:15pm, which lasted so long I completely missed History of 2-D Design. (That’s okay.) Instead of going home, I went back to the jewelry lab to pour a silicone mold. 24 hour curing times are a real drag.

I got to school several hours early on wednesday so I could print out a ton of stuff and pick up a mannequin from the bowels of Design Studios on Broad. Then, we had motion graphics as normal.

Jewelry on thursday morning was exasperatingly underproductive. I met up with Dana at lunchtime, and we looked at fine arts thesis shows together. In Senior Ad, we had a rousing/upsetting/overwhelming conversation about job interviews and salaries. After that, in History of 2-D design, I participated in a group presentation about iconic WPA posters. It wasn’t very good, but our teacher was positively overcome with joy at our efforts—so that was a nice relief. In what is perhaps the best possible demonstration of my mental state, I forgot to take a snapshot.

I was back at school for all afternoon working on thesis and jewelry business—can’t stand to be away; can’t stand to be there, either. Lots to do for Directions and thesis and graduation. Oh my.

• Had a very disappointing monday, consisting of an extremely dysfunctional package design class followed by an ill-planned friendship lunch. (Turns out the tiki bar on Grant is closed on mondays.)
• Managed to tweet about White Castle a whole lot, but didn’t do a whole lot of actual work. This project is shaping up to be quite challenging.
• Almost broke down into tears in Cheryl Steele’s class after realizing the true amount of work due. It doesn’t help that the class is full of fashion majors to whom I cannot relate on any level.
• Finished up my package design project in a hurry on wednesday night with copious amounts of glue gun, all so I could use the shrink-wrapping machine at school on thursday. You see, I have all these things planned out very carefully.
• Had some nice old-fashioned group critiques in Advanced Type both tuesday and thursday. It is nice to sit in a circle and talk about your work.
• Braunschweiger sandwiches.
• Worked on my final garment for Draping. Lots.
• Drove back to campus friday evening for the opening reception of the senior graphic design thesis show. Introduced myself to one of the senior ad teachers; ate cheese; awkwardly misunderstood sarcasm; criticized and lauded people’s work with A, my critique cohort.

• Had a generally tough time getting back in the swing after Thanksgiving!
• Called off my independent study meeting and felt bad about it all day… doing independent study is quite a lot of stress!
• Had a legitimate breakdown in jewelry on tuesday after realizing I needed to make 20 rivets and having nothing go right.
• Made a lot of trips to the CCAD library, who had new reserve books for me pretty much every day!
• Snuck a metal file home to work on my jewelry project, which is a big, jangly necklace. Got it fixed up well enough to turn it in on thursday. Phew.
• Spent all week and weekend working on an eight page paper for my graphic novels class, which is extremely unenjoyable.

• Completed the last figure drawing session of the semester. We drew Jeremy and I did not do a very good job, prompting Boryana to say all kinds of hilarious, unintentionally-harsh things about my work.
• Went to see the “visiting artist”, Nalini Nadkarni, who seemed like a very kind but misguided person.
• Looked at a lot of post-impressionistic paintings in 19th century art history class. We are getting very near the end of the century!
• Did my “final presentation” for my History of fashion design class. It was a ten-minute talk on menswear between 1920–1940 and I think I bored the entire class to death.
• Went to the sculpture lab with Amanda and Jason and helped make stuff with tools.
• Spent the rest of wednesday in illustration working on my clay sculpture.
• Worked in the woodshop on thursday morning and had a nice conversation about accordions with Mr. Laskowski!
• Successfully used the scroll saw to cut out a bunch of things for our board game.
• Watched Hitchcock’s Vertigo in my American lit class—a colossal waste of time but also a welcome diversion.
• Had another one of those “sit at a table and crit your peers” in Burleigh’s class. It went ok.
• Conducted several team meetings and stayed up very late and talked on the phone a lot and made many trips to various printers.
• Worked hard on team stuff, all week, pretty much every waking minute of the day.

• Finished up my last long-pose drawing of the semester.
• Got a piece of dark chocolate from Bob, which made my day.
• Realized an inconsequential-yet-valuable anthropology project was due; skipped lunch to get it done.
• Printed out those portraits I took and gave them to my neighbors, who loved them.
• Began studying the physics of light in my science class; had to do an actual math equation. What is this I don’t even.
• Did a 2.5-hour crit of Crayola magazine ad concepts in my illustration class. Has everyone but me completely forgotten that it’s an illustration class, not a come up with silly avant-garde ads class?
• Got cheated out of having a photo crit because “not enough people showed up to class”; instead we did basically nothing and got dismissed two hours early.
• Had one of those ad classes where we just mill around and chat with each other for three hours. It was a grand old time spent with my peers, but I never did get to talk to Burleigh about my work.
• Got an 8.5/10 presentation grade on my aforementioned cheapskate mounting technique, which I consider fair punishment for how it ended up looking.
• Accomplished an unusually large amount of knitting this week.