Present Joys

Editor’s note: I’ve been keeping a usually-laconic digest of my schooltime activities since sophomore year. And now we’re back, for senior year!

• Had no monday classes at all, for the first time since starting college.
• Started out the school year tuesday morning with Intermediate jewelry, a class I am still slightly uncertain about keeping. It’s going to be a busy semester.
• Went straight from jewelry to friendship lunch, which we’ve tentatively moved from mondays to tuesdays.
• Started out wednesday with Brand and market development, the only class this semester where I get to see Jason and John, two of my favorite dudes. Our teacher, Jim Johnson, filled the entire three-hour class period with a lecture which he shared with a visiting professional.
• Met my dear friend Amanda for wednesday lunch. We have no classes together this semester. We spent time chatting outside while maintaining a safe distance from CCAD’s involvement fair thing. We even ran into Mr. Burleigh who, after I yelled to him, came over to visit. Very sweet.
• Finished wednesday by attending my only once-a-week class, History of cinema, which is held in the Canzani auditorium. I am reserving judgement for a few weeks; be sure to check back soon to see if my attitude has devolved into antipathy!
• Went back to Jewelry on thursday morning and worked the whole time to produce a very poor-quality married metal solder. At least the teacher is growing on me.
• While soldering, received a nice compliment on my trousers from Matt Flegle. I confess I was very excited.
• Drove off campus to have lunch with Jim Kucera, church pianist/friend/man of mystery. Had a nice time, got back to campus just in time to spend 15 minutes looking for a parking spot. There are going to be serious problems with parking this year.
• Finished off thursday with Ad, which was dismissed early due to wifi outage problems, but not before we’d done a very cute exercise
• Used my unexpected extra thursday afternoon time to go back to the jewelry lab to visit Chris Hill, former jewelry teacher/dear friend/excellent dancer. Then I went downstairs and got Dawson Kellogg to help me use the belt sander.
• Back to Portfolio and got to leave two hours early, again indirectly related to the school’s wifi outage. Get it together, CCAD.
• Hauled myself back to school on friday morning (a first for my time at college) for the second part of Brand and Market development; spent the whole class on a client briefing; received free pill containers. The visiting professional was back, and he is turning out to be quite a fun dude.

• Didn’t have school on monday, meaning I didn’t have figure drawing or electronic publishing (the worst class of the week). Instead I went thrifting and bought a half-naked Barbie doll for 90¢.
• Began the semester with a 9:30am tuesday morning class (which felt super-luxurious compared to my usual 8am start time).
• The aforementioned 9:30am class is readings in American literature. The teacher is nice but doesn’t seem to value good things. Also: she uses unnecessarily vulgar language while teaching. Lame.
• Kicked off my tuesday/thursday-lunchtime history of 19th-century art class with Ann Shifflet, my freshman art history teacher and one of my favorite people ever ever ever. A bunch of friendship lunch gang people are in the class with me! it’s going to be literally unbelievable and wonderful.
• Reunited with M-Tabs and all the other people in my team class. There are only 16 of us at this point and we’re as tightly-knit as I suppose an ad class could get.
• Got sorted onto a new team for a half-semester-long project. Not excited, but not upset.
• Stayed late tuesday afternoon for a three-hour history of fashion design class. The teacher is kinda boring but it should be a good experience. Lots of weird things on the horizon.
• Brought my half-naked Barbie to the fashion history class because the teacher told me to.
• Resumed my wednesday schedule with the 6-hour-long illustration methods class. There are a bunch of new people in this class that nobody knows.
• Wednesday friendship lunch! Got to see all my food-service friends.
• Drew animals! Ate chocolate cookies! Got reprimanded for speaking too loudly! (all the usual wednesday afternoon things.)
• Had to endure an utterly painful second American lit class on thursday morning, during which I realized none of my peers know anything about American history (“Christopher Columbus? he landed in Massachusetts, right?”).
• Listened to my American lit teacher misrepresent and criticize the Puritans—and argued with her about it.
• Gleefully resumed my thursday afternoon ad class (the best class of the week) and looked at a bunch of super-dated direct-mail things.
• In general: got a lot of knitting done.