prepping for next year

My university plans have changed again. And finals are just as brutal as ever.

Monday: Due to it being Easter Monday, there were no classes. I spent the day doing homework.

Tuesday: I returned the DVDs to the VRC and ended up discussing them with the woman in charge of the Collection (Rebecca, who's a NSCAD grad--Photography, Class of '99). I think Anna Leonowens and I would've gotten along quite nicely, and I love that she was a suffragette. Once again, I spent the day doing homework, including prepping for the next day's printing.

I'm determined to get an apartment next year: I've lived in a university residence for the last four years, and at twenty-four (twenty-five in July), I'm ready to truly start living on my own and be responsible for paying rent. So I visited a couple of apartment buildings on my way home. I didn't get to see any rooms, but I like the feel of both places, and they're close to pretty much everything.

Later that evening, I started to feel the telltale signs of a cold.

Wednesday: I woke up feeling like I could've slept another hour or two. By the end of the day, however, I was feeling much better.

That day was Printing Day. I spent a chunk of the afternoon doing final adjustments and then printed the photos.

Class was another group critique. I had some tweaks to make, but overall it went well.

Thursday: Here's where things get interesting. I went to school early to meet with Adrian Fish, who'll be my teacher next semester for APC, to talk about the course. I've been discussing it a lot with a student who's currently taking it, Mary Ellen, and I wanted to see what Adrian had to say. We went over the course outline, which he emailed to me. I also mentioned that I'd be doing all nine of my history credits (three courses) that semester. With APC that's a whopping eighteen credits, i.e., overload. Whenever I've mentioned this to my friends at school they've all said something along the lines of "that's a lot." And it is. But I'd gotten it into my head that I'll finish my degree in three semesters, and all my plans and decisions have been based around that schedule, so adding another semester was more than a bit stressful. Adrian said the same--in fact, he said that that was the most difficult way to go about finishing said degree. That did it for me. Because Adrian's awesome and I trust him, I figured he had to be right about this. I've been kind of worried, anyway, about doing it that way. Yes, it's cheaper, but while I'd save money, I'd probably end up racking up a lot of sleep debt (and this gal needs eight to nine hours of sleep a night. I can get by on seven for a night or two, but any less, or several nights in a row of seven hours or less, and you don't want to be me. Though I somehow manage to happily go through Christmas Day on about six and a half hours of sleep.). I'd also be stressed out of my mind, especially during finals, which are stressful enough at fifteen credits. And I'd run the risk of doing a crappy job on my APC project, and my expectations for that course are higher than they are for most other courses because it's the thesis course for the Photography BFA (and as I've gotten older and learned more, my standards for my own work and that of others have skyrocketed--and not just for photography, either: this also applies to other forms of visual art, dance and music). I won't accept anything less than the best. But because money is a big concern for me (I have a student loan for the first time, having gone through NBCCD with a university fund that no longer exists), I was concerned about the financial side of adding another semester. However, I'd rather go a little deeper into debt than sacrifice the quality of my work, my GPA--and my sanity.

After all that, I went to the SUNSCAD AGM--which didn't get underway until about 12:30. I unfortunately had to leave just after the new SUNSCAD exec was ratified due to class at 1:00.

The latter part of class was a working class, and I spent it tidying up the pieces that I'd done. During break, I went to OSAS to talk with them about the change in plan because I'd already applied to graduate and listed my graduation date as Winter '14. I have a couple of appointments to talk things over on Tuesday, which is going to be a ridiculously busy day.

Friday: The last set of presentations for Obsolescence. We also made plans for next week: because it's the last day for that course, we're meeting at ten instead of 8:30. Hello, sleeping in until 8:30!

Anna spent the class going over the structure and format of our final essays.

Saturday: Up and at 'em. That morning we installed the show on the second floor of the Port Campus, and my print is looking gorgeous. This is my first time mounting a photo using earth magnets, and I love the look. It cuts down on cost, yes (and I don't know if NSCAD has frames that I can borrow nor do I know who cuts mats well and charges an amount that's easy for a student to cough up), but some images are best when presented "naked". It forces the viewer to be confronted by the work and whatever idea the artist is trying to get across whether the viewer likes it or not. This is my first show outside New Brunswick.

Once the show was up, I went back to my place and spent the rest of the day studying, and I'm amazed at how much I got done--which is good news for Tuesday. I also dropped two courses from my Fall '13 schedule and registered for courses for Winter '14. I'll be taking APC and Survey of 20th Century Art in the Fall (twelve credits), and Contemporary Indigenous Arts and Topics in Canadian Art in the Winter (six credits, meaning that I'll be a part-time student--full-time status kicks in at nine credits). Since Friday, I've felt lighter when I think about the remaining courses: I don't have to worry about how I'm going to get all my projects done. Plus, if Contemporary Indigenous Arts is as awesome as I think it's going to be, I could treat it as an extension of my summer project on First Nations peoples, culture, history, treaties and treatment by white people (that's probably going to be the most painful part of the project).

Due to all the excitement, I didn't listen to the opera. This week the Met performed Das Rheingold, which is home to one of the most beautiful preludes ever. I don't care what you think of Wagner or opera--that thing's awesome. I'm not the biggest Wagner fan--I'm definitely not a Ring-head--but the Das Rheingold prelude is one of my favourite pieces. I love how it starts out simply and then grows and builds and swells, evoking the Rhine river. Here it is, as performed by the Met in the new Robert Lepage production. That's all eight MOO hornists you're hearing.



Sunday: Once again, I spent the day doing homework down at the Port Campus. Despite my rather late start to the day, I managed to finish much of the rest of my to-do list.