NSCAD rocks!

After a week of stress, with a little bit of homesickness for NBCCD thrown in for good measure, my life is finally starting to feel normal again. I'm happy this weekend.

Monday: I didn't have class that day, but I still ended up at NSCAD. I needed to finish filling out the Confirmation of Earnings (CoE) form for my student loan, but I wasn't sure about how to answer some of the questions, so I met with Bernadette Kehoe (the financial director), and not only did she answer all my questions, but she also faxed the form for me.

Tuesday: We spent that class in the darkroom--and I found out that I had to redo the assignment for Intro Photography.

By the way, NSCAD spoils their photo students: they have a machine that develops the prints for you. They still have trays (tray processing is more archival), but the machine is faster--and the prints come out dry!

Wednesday: Rise and shine! I had my first bookbinding class that morning. And for NSCAD, "morning" means 8:30--not 9:00, which is the case at NBCCD. Most of the class was devoted to introducing us students to the printing studio. However, at the end we each made a small, basic book, not unlike one that I made during Media Explorations (Textiles) in FVA year.

That afternoon, I reshot the assignment for Intro Photography.

Thursday: I think I'm going to like Photography Beyond the Frame about as much as I liked Peter's second-year courses. Yay for independent-study courses taught by the studio head! This week Bob asked us what sort of equipment we use, and many of us (including yours truly) still own at least one film SLR. He also bombarded us with a slide show--using real slides--of ideas for our current project.

That evening, I had an appointment at the Apple store because I did the stupidest thing ever and spilled orange juice on my laptop's keyboard a week ago Friday. The computer still works, though about a quarter of the keys are unusable. The guy who I talked with said that although Apple could replace the keyboard for about $200, nothing can be done about the internal damage, which will get worse over time, and eventually my computer will die. Because I still want to type at my usual forty-five-to-fifty-five words per minute (WPM) speed, I bought a USB keyboard, which is more than a hundred bucks cheaper than replacing the built-in keyboard.

After the appointment, I went back to NSCAD and processed a roll of film that I'd shot on Wednesday (a re-do of my Intro to Photography assignment), and developed some prints from the negatives. Let's just say that agitating a reel of film is the best therapy in the world (after each period of agitation, you bang the canister on something hard to break up any bubbles that may have formed, and I took out a lot of frustration on that canister). Once I was done, because it was about ten at night, I called a cab. As I waited outside the main entrance, I could hear You Feel the Same Way, too by the Rankins being blasted on the second floor. I couldn't help but think about the fact that the male lead, Jimmy Rankin, is a NSCAD alumnus (BFA Class of '88).



Friday: I got to school early, so because the visual resources collection is housed just a stone's throw away from the photo studio, I had time to kill and I'd never been in that room, I decided to explore. The collection is made up of a sizable DVD collection, tons of slides, some video tapes--and a whole bunch of NFB movies on reels. Apparently, when the NFB moved shop in Halifax, they didn't want the reels anymore, so NSCAD took them.

That afternoon, we handed in our assignments, and I found out that I had to do mine over again: although I've been trying, I've been having a difficult time understanding the assignment and getting it right. Adrian also did an overview of photo history, and I loved the fact that he mentioned a few women--which is no easy task because photography was invented at a time when if a woman discovered something, a man (e.g., her husband) would get credit for it. They say that history is only what gets written down, and that couldn't be more true for photography. Since I've already taken two photo history courses, this was more of a refresher for me, though there were some names and facts that were new.

When my work was critiqued in class, Adrian said that he wanted to meet with me to go over the assignment. He suggested during his office hours, but we ended up talking about it after class. When he'd told me to do it over again during the critique, I thought, "oh, shoot...," and no doubt it showed. He made a semi-humorous comment about it, so I told him what was going on: the fact that negative stuff just seemed to be happening one thing after another, about my computer, and about the fact that I honestly couldn't take any more stress in my life.

That evening, I put almost all of the important files on my computer on my external hard drive. By the time I went to sleep, I was at a point where, if my computer had died the next day, I would've been satisfied with how much I had saved.

Saturday: I took the day as slowly as I could, while still getting work done. After beating the crowd to the laundry room (note to self: do laundry in the morning, rather than in the afternoon, which is when everyone wants to do it and you have to compete for the machines), I finished most of my project for Bob's class and did some shopping since that day was a tax-free day at the SuperStore.

Sunday: I got the last of my homework done (a reading for Intro Photography and putting the finishing touches on the images for my independent-study project) while listening to CBC Music's Orchestral channel and Skyped with my parents.

Tomorrow I'm going to redo the assignment for Intro Photography, and SUNSCAD is having a teach-in about the future of NSCAD University, which is going through some major financial difficulties, as well as hosting a couple of speakers from CLASSE (a student organization from Quebec. They were one of the groups that organized the Maple Spring protests last March.).


Here are the blog posts that I wrote this summer:

thank you, Maurice
carrément dans le rouge
Freude, schöner Götterfunken*
Graduation Day
remembering the attacks in Norway
bring it, NSCAD!
Letter to the FVAs: one week and counting