Sunday, November 25, 2012

I love my school, I love my union

I take back what I said about finals last time (it's going to an intense month): with almost three weeks (two weeks and six days to be exact--the last day is outside NSCAD's normal calendar, more on that later) left, and us NSCADians being super-busy--some even taking advantage of the university's twenty-four-hour access--the final weeks of the semester are going to fly by.

Monday: I spent the afternoon at NSCAD, scanning negatives for my project for Intro.

Tuesday: We met individually with Adrian to discuss how our projects are coming along. He and I went over the contact sheet that I'd done and discussed which ideas were more successful and that I should pursue.

I went to my first SUNSCAD council meeting that evening. Among the highlights, there's a possibility that FUNSCAD 1 (the faculty union) could go on strike next semester. I can't remember all the details, but teachers' salaries is one of the issues. Another issue is the fact that, as a way for the school to save money, a lot of the faculty members are part-timers, which means no benefits and that they're paid a fraction of what full-timers are paid. SUNSCAD will have to decide whether or not to join the faculty in the strike. I think we join in the protest because a. we'll have nothing better to do; b. because of NSCAD's financial issues, we're all in the same boat whether we're students, teachers or studio techs and c. solidarity. Even if SUNSCAD officially says "no" to taking action, I'd probably show up anyway in solidarity. Although the school needs to cough up cash that it doesn't have right now, NSCAD is one of the best art schools this side of Ontario, and no matter how the financial issues are resolved it must remain so--ahem, Board of Governors!

Wednesday: I put together one of the earlier books (until that day, it'd been in two pieces), and worked on another book.

In the afternoon, I shot another roll for Intro and processed it.

Thursday: Turns out, I'm going to be staying in HFX an extra day: we decided to have the final critique on December thirteenth (the day after classes end) because then we can use a room in the Academy Building. We'll arrive that morning to put up our work and spend the rest of the day critiquing said work. We also talked about how we're doing with our projects and watched a couple of movies.

Friday: I spent the morning at NSCAD, scanning negatives. I'm not a morning person, but I actually enjoyed walking to school that day and burying my nose in a computer screen. At least I didn't have to be out the door by 7:30/6:30 EST, which is the case on Wednesdays.

We developed photos on fibre-based paper that afternoon, and then used the remaining time to work on our projects. In case you're wondering, there are two kinds of photo paper: resin-coated (RC) paper and fibre-based (FB) paper. One of the main differences between the two is that FB paper is a lot more work than RC: more time in the chemicals, more time to wash, more time drying, more, more, more... As to which kind is more archival, throughout my post-secondary career, I've heard that FB is the one to beat. We're talking hundreds of years here. Once we had a print that we were happy with, we were free to do whatever we wanted. I went back to scanning.

Saturday: Saturday was about as unproductive as Friday was productive. I got virtually no homework done that day. Though I did go to the Letterpress Gang's Christmas market.

Sunday: I was determined to make up for Saturday's unproductiveness. I worked on my projects for Intro and Beyond the Frame until I could barely take it anymore.

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