Hey, I know you! You're me!

So far, this semester has been all about revelations. Not revelations like turning on a light in the dark, but more like turning on a light in a very dim room. Let me explain.

Things I thought about myself and my own interests have been reinforced: I never knew it before our class trip to the Jean Paul Gaultier exhibit at the MMFA, but this designer's been affecting me for nearly my whole life! As a little girl infatuated with Madonna, watching the Blonde Ambition tour on tv, that gold corset made quite the impression. I never tried to dress like my idol, but somehow, at 9 years old, I could appreciate the couture. I also always marvelled at certain haute couture pieces without knowing a thing about them, and then upon seeing them at the exhibit, I went "ah! of course!"

A short-lived phase in my younger days involved becoming a Navy Seal, after having watched Steven Segal but out seriously slick moves in Under Siege. I didn't actually want to join the army; I just wanted to know the moves. As it turned out, Steven Segal is an Aikido master. Fast-forward 15 years or so, and I still think Aikido is awesome. I sign up for "Combative Fitness" as my physical education class, thinking to learn various martial arts, and it turns out my teacher is an Aikido pro. Synchronicity? Yes, please. Needless to say, this is one of my favourite classes...

I've always been "good at art", but (as I discussed in my previous post) was not one of those typically creative people (my mother will argue this, I know). I'm a perfectionist, careful and calculating, hard on myself, with high expectations. There's a place for people like me!!! It's called Graphic Design! Oh, those Fine Arts twerps can keep their interpretive line drawings and blind-contours; give me anchor points to line up or typefaces to render (and enough time to do it, mind you), or a page to layout and I'm happy!

Now that I've written this blog post (a bit overdue, maybe), I'm just going to go have a freak-out over the pile of homework I have for next week.

I'm my harshest critic.

I have this thing; I'm super critical of myself, and can be a bit self-depracating. Yeah, aren't we all, right? Hear me out, there's a lesson in here, and I learned it first-hand yesterday.

Growing up, I was always the kid who could draw. Ok, there was this other kid who was really good at drawing Garfield, but I didn't ever see him draw anything else. (His Garfield was really good, though. Flawless.) Anyway, my family always told me I was good, that I had artist's hands, and so on and so on, but I always kind of thought they were just saying that because they were my family. You know, kids are more perceptive than they're given credit for. Sometimes, my mom would shoot me a compliment, and I'd say "you're just saying that because you're my mom," to which she'd reply "no! It's because it's true!" But you know, I always kind of thought they were all bullshitting me to an extent. No clue where I learned to be this way, but I guess I started young.

In high school, it was the same. Art class was my best subject, the teacher liked me, I could draw coherent figures and use different styles…and I had a friend who was also really good. She was into anime, so she would draw those manga characters. Really well. And she could draw really well from memory. I'm more of a "see-it-and-draw-it" kind of person (I guess you'd call that "still life", but that conjures up images of chairs and flower arrangements; things I'm not great at) and I took that to be a weakness on my part. My friend and I were both asked to provide full-page drawings for use in the school yearbook, and I drew a centaur holding a scroll, with some crap in the background, and I'll admit that it's a pretty impressive drawing for a 15 year old, but I could always find fault with whatever I drew.

Fast-forward 14 years, and I'm still like that. I look around at my classmates, and I'm trying to pick out the ones who are better than me. I'm trying to compare myself.

Yesterday, though, I had a slight epiphany during my Fine Arts classes.

The first class was Basic Drawing Studies, and we had to (among other things) show a few sketches on the theme of "Transforming Futures". Long story short: how do you envision the future? Well hot dog; nobody wanted to show the class their sketches. We all felt like our sketches we crappy, undeveloped, lame, etc… but as a group, we all contributed to helping those crappy sketches (and they were not all crappy, let me tell you) transform into more interesting ideas. Lesson #1: Most people are just as insecure as you are about their art.

The next class was 2D Foundation Studies, which is basically just working with colour, with paint as your medium. We painted to music, following the teacher's guidelines, letting the music guide us, and created a piece that is abstract and non-representational. Basically, a mess of paint. Well, shit on a stick! Some were really nice, and others were more mediocre, but I knew most of us (if not all) felt initially a bit awkward about it. Lesson #2: "Good at drawing" does not a good artist make.

And to top it all off, some of us are good at certain classes, while some of us are good at other classes! I might feel a bit awkward flailing my charcoal around on newsprint to produce a negative space drawing of a bloody chair, but I feel great using Adobe Illustrator, perfecting my serifs in typography, and redrawing my blob over and over again with slight modifications. Others find this type of stuff tedious and frustrating, and would much rather fling paint at Mayfair paper, or draw the aforementioned chair. Yay! Lesson #3: Nobody's good at everything, but everybody's good at something.

So in the end, I shouldn't be so harsh on myself, and neither should you…on yourself, that is…or on me, come to think of it.

The cat is out of the bag

Apparently, my public demands that I write more. I didn't even know I had a public, but, well, there it is. The reason that I haven't been writing is very simple: I have lots of work to do. Schoolwork! Yup, I've just finished my 3rd week of class, and teachers have been giving us homework pretty much the whole time. So basically, I've been drawing and making sure that I get 8 hours of sleep for as long as I can (realistically, when things start to get really heavy, I will probably get less and less sleep.)

This blog post has actually been in progress for 2 weeks, so when I say "last week", please read "2 weeks ago", and so on:

Last week, the first week of class, one of my classmates asked myself and another classmate something along the lines of "so, are you guys getting to know your way around yet?" Naturally, having attended the very same school going on 12 years ago, I confessed the fact. There was this silence--short but very telling--where my classmate was obviously processing what I'd just said. She had a bit of a freak-out, where she kept exclaiming things like, "oh my GOD! You totally don't look 29!" and "Oh my GOD! No WAY!" She also just couldn't believe that she knew a 29 year old. She also said something about me being "sophisticated", which I thought was the icing on the cake. Then, she or the other classmate (I can't really remember) asked me "what it's like". Can you believe that? Being old is all relative, obviously... (Edit: The classmate in question will no doubt recognize herself if she reads this; I hope she won't misconstrue my tone as being condescending.)

In my drawing class this week, our teacher asked us to introduce ourselves, one by one. She wanted to know a bit about us, about our art background, and some general things like how we came to want to be graphic designers and such. This was my big coming-out party. "I actually was in the Creative Arts program in '99..." to this, even the teacher's eyes got big. I went on to briefly describe how I'd always been immersed in art, but never thought it was something you could make money at. I wanted to be a film animator; that was my thing. In those days, though, film animation was becoming increasingly more computer-driven, and I had absolutely no interest in that. Dropped out, got into music, held a job for 7 years, had an epiphany, and the rest is history.

A lot of the people in my class are coming straight from high school, but there's also an interesting number of them who are transferring from other programs in the same school, as well as people who have done university and decided that they would rather be graphic designers. I'm delighted to see such variety, and I'm actually looking forward to seeing what my classmates are capable of (but believe me, I'm feeling competitive, even this early-on.) The one other girl in my class who I thought might be older than me, as it turns out, is 2 years my junior. Naturally, we get on well together.

I don't want to make a big deal about my age, because I don't attribute much importance to it, but it does come up, and I thought it would be important to mention in a post. I won't be dwelling on it much in this blog, though, but if my public has any questions pertaining to that, I will gladly answer.

I've seen many other bloggers ask their public a question at the end of a post, but I hesitate to because if nobody answers my question, I'll feel like a bit of a tool. I guess it's worth a shot, though, so here goes:

What would your biggest fears be, in returning to school? If you already have gone back, what were your fears, and did you find them to be justified in the end?

My First Day at School

Sounds like a paper you'd write in, say, grade 1, doesn't it? Well, in a way, I feel like a kid right now: I've just finished my first homework assignment! Pretty easy, sure, but what do you expect for a first day?

Ok, let me back up a minute and start from the morning:

6am, oh GOD, why does it have to be so early? Because you have an 8:30 class, dumb-ass. Ah, of course. In my years of living in Work-Land, I've forgotten that school can start before 9am. Big deal, same morning routine, except an hour earlier and (bonus!) I got to see the tail end of the sunrise! Commuting was pretty relaxed, but trying to use public transportation with a big portfolio in my hands kind of made me feel like a tool. Good thing I have a swell locker to store it in!

(SEGWAY)

OH WAIT, my locker sucks. Yes, it fits my gigantic portfolio (which holds my gigantic 19"x24" pad of tracing paper, 24" T-square, and other assorted art-nerd goodies), but I have to share it with another art student and fit the rest of my stuff in there. Not to mention winter boots and coats! Holy Mother of Cramming Shit In! I also have not one, but two pencil cases (one for art-nerd crap like specialized erasers and expensive lead pencils, and one for normal pens and highlighters) to wedge in there somehow, and I don't even have books yet! Oh, Sweet Lord of Supplies, how am I gonna pull this off? Creatively, I guess. I bought a retardo-strong magnetic hook from Zellers (and cut myself on the cruel packaging as I pulled it out of the bag), so I can, uhh, hang stuff up. The idea here is to utilize every inch of locker space available.

Moving right along (slowly, if you're one of several thousands attending your first class of the fall semester) to my first class: 20th Century History: War & Conflict. Could be fun, and I'm serious. I like history, and the idea of discussing things like WWI and WWII, as well as different social and political conflicts (think: racism, sexism, anti-Semitism...) seems appealing to me. Ok, by now you must think I'm nuts...

So we move on to my next class, Introduction to Page Layout Software. Yay! Immediately, there was something cool about my first design-related class: as they were waiting outside the class, the students were getting to know each-other! This, in stark contrast to the history class, where it might as well have been detention. Sure, not everyone was super-chatty (myself included), but the general atmosphere here was way more friendly. Maybe it's because we will be seeing each-other in 7 graphics classes, as opposed to some random grouping of art kids and (cringe) Pure and Applied Sciences kids, with a light sprinkle of Cinema. Or maybe art kids are just more fun and open. Yes, that must be it! And then we filed in and I took a seat behind a 24" iMac. But that was just a teaser, because we didn't so much as log in. Sad face. Next week, though, we will begin working in Adobe InDesign! Woot!

3 hours later, I found a nice quiet spot in my new favourite lunch nook, and ate my PB&J sandwich and a banana. See why I feel like a kid? Anyway, what's cool about this lunch spot (for now, anyway, until the fresh meat discover they can hang out all over the campus, not just in a huge, disruptive herd in the Atrium) is that it's quiet! Oh, that welcome sound of silence, such delicate respite for the aurally over-stimulated...

Then, some school supply shopping and off to...the Forum?! Christ, I have a class in the Forum. It was brought to my attention the other day that the fact that I call it "The Forum", and not "The Pepsi Forum" or whatever other nonsense they're calling it now proves that I'm of "a certain age". Super. It brings me right back to the Stanley Cup riot of '93...yeah, that was in the nineties.

English class is, well, English class. Alliteration, prose, personification, metaphor, you get it. Read some song lyrics, did a small assignment on reading comprehension, and went over (for the third time in 3 classes) the school's plagiarism policy. Apparently, this is a big friggin' deal nowadays, thanks to The Internet. I'll write more about that another time, but suffice to say that this was a prevailing theme today. That, and texting while walking!

Oh, God, can you put your stupid phone away for, like, 10 minutes??? Don't you think it's a good idea to look where you're going???

Ahem. So, sorry for that last little bit, and thanks if you made it this far. I know this is pretty much a huge blog post, and I promise that they will rarely ever be this long again. Maybe upcoming posts will include photos, too! Yay! Visual stimulus!

30 is a small number, folks.

Mature Student.

Oh crap, that's what I am, isn't it? I'm 29 and about to embark on a new chapter in my life: back to college! Sounds scary, but surprisingly enough, I'm not frightened one bit about returning to class with 18 year-olds. I quit my job of almost 7 years as a guitar repair-person at a well-known music store to dive head-first into the world of graphic design. Part of me thinks, "this is going to be a piece of cake! I worked 9-6 in retail (read: Hell--holidays are nonexistent) for almost 7 years!" but another part thinks "you have no idea what you're in for."

Here's the thing: I'm "old". Not really, but to a teen, 29 or 30 is like, "do you have kids? Are you married?" *sigh* I don't feel almost 30. In fact, I feel like school is really where I should be. I'm at this age crossroads where a lot of people I know are getting married, having kids (that is, if they aren't already in grown-up land), and although I feel like saying "holy crap! Marriage? Kids??", I realize that it's quite age-appropriate. I guess I fit into a category of people who act a whole lot younger than we are; Not that age scares me, or anything. I'll proudly admit to my real age!

All that being said, I'd like to add that this is my second go at college. Yes, I made a feeble attempt at it about 11 years ago, but lost interest and got side-tracked. When you're 18 and your teachers tell you they don't take attendance and will not send letters home to your parents, it's easy to skip class. It's also easy to miss out on all the great opportunities that exist for students: discounts, part-time jobs, a month off during the holidays... Students have it so good and they don't even know it.

So I invite you to read along and (hopefully) cheer me on as I write about my experiences and do my homework. I also invite you to check out my other (almost abandoned, guitar tech) blog, FixTHIS! I say "almost abandoned" because as I am no longer employed as a guitar tech, I won't really update it anymore. I may occasionally have something to say, but this here will become my main blog.

School starts in 2 days, so I should be posting again real soon!