Wow.

This past week was unbelievably intense: I was at the school until some point between seven and eight every night (on Tuesday I didn't get home until around nine--and in addition to the usual shower, that night was my night to do kitchen duty). That meant that just about every day I was pulling a ten- or eleven-hour day.

Monday: And so it began... I spent the morning working on my independent study project (alt processes), and as a result I missed lunch and had to quickly grab a muffin from Read's before dashing off to class. This week one of the things we're doing is fake tattoos--selecting an image, and using Photoshop to paste it onto a body-part to show what the tattoo would look like in real life. One of the ones that I did was a full back tattoo of the Waltz of the Flowers from The Nutcracker. Which was a crazy idea because getting all four pages to look just right drove me nuts. But it was worth it.

We also did two cell-phone ads, and we were encouraged to say something funny in the small text at the bottom of the ad--Drew wanted us to make him laugh. The first one I did said, "Spring... for a new phone" in big text, with "(Especially if your current phone is about seven years old, like mine is. Yes, really.)." BTW, mine may be old, but I'm not really a cellphone person--I barely use the darn thing. The second one (which I finished just this afternoon) said, "The coolest phone. Ever. (New technology always is.)" with "Cellphones are not waterproof, and will not survive getting dunked in the local river when you hit your first set of rapids during the first outing in your new canoe. Usually." (Inspired by the fact that I used a dark shade of blue for the background.)

Tuesday: That morning I had panel assessment, along with the rest of the first- and second-year diploma students. It went well. One of the things that I submitted was the self-portrait that I'd printed out, and during the critique someone pointed out that by not looking at the camera, the viewer was able to look all around the room and notice things, rather than being forced to look at me, which would've been the case if I'd been looking at the camera.

They're thinking about making panel assessment an annual thing for the diploma students.

I finally started work on the mock-up for the final(!) project for Design, which is a cardboard chair. I didn't finish the mock-up until Thursday afternoon.

Wednesday: I was really tired by that point. I honestly don't remember anything special. More work on projects, class--the usual.

Thursday: We shot Anne-Marie's and Roger's tablau vivant, which was a rather dark spoof of da Vinci's The Last Supper. We did the shoot at Officer's Square, which isn't far from the school. I will spare you the details (I know you're reading this, Mom), but even for someone with a fairly strong stomach, the prep almost made me want to barf (there are so many gross things we humans consider as food).

Friday: The end of a long week. Since the week had been so brutal, I decided to go all-out and spurge: a caramel corretto at Second Cup in the morning, followed by a spinach-cheese cêpe (my favourite) at Cora's (which is conveniently located across the street and a bit down from the college).

Since March Break, the second half of the semester has felt like a sprint towards the finish-line: graduation for the FVAs, second-year diploma and advanced diploma students, and summer for all of us. We've started, or are thinking about, the final projects, and the first-year Photogs are now seriously discussing the show at City Hall (the opening is on April nineteenth).