surrounded by support

Two things that I forgot to mention: 1. If you haven't already done so, please listen to the Grieg track that I linked to last week with good speakers or headphones. Computer speakers (which lack true bass and treble) don't do Trond justice. 2. Bob Bean has a show up at the Saint Mary's University Art Gallery, and the opening was last Friday. I was one of several NSCAD photo students who showed up.

Monday: I've wanted to learn how to use the Imacon scanner since I heard how good it is last year. That afternoon, I met Adrian in the printing lab to finally cross that item off my NSCAD bucket list (it's one of those bits of equipment that you have to be taught how to use before you can use it on your own). Because Adrian's awesome and one of the teachers that I truly trust, I wanted to tell him about the stuff that's making my life hell right now. So I did--in a flood of tears--before he taught me how to use the scanner (which is fairly straightforward, but as it costs about $25,000--six and a quarter times more than the Epson Stylus Pro 7900 printer--it's the kind of thing you don't want to mess up).

That evening, I updated Jake on the situation with said hell--in another flood of tears. I'd updated Alex earlier, and though I choked up a bit that time, it wasn't as bad. Jake suggested some things that I could do in this situation, and both guys hugged me.

Tuesday: I met a friend for coffee at my favourite coffee shop and then spent the day working on my project.

That evening, I met one of my former classmates, Ken, in the printing lab. He was doing a sculpture project for school and needed to print a huge photo for it. By "huge" I mean 36" x 72". As he'd never printed that big before, Jake had suggested that he have someone who had experience printing big help him. I printed two big photos last year, so Ken asked me to help him. Ken had seen some references to my current situation on Facebook, and wanted to talk with me about it, which we did after printing the photo. Like Jake, he made suggestions as to what I could do in my situation. And yes, that meant yet another flood of tears from me (one of the worst since this whole thing began). I didn't get home until just after 11:00 that night.

Wednesday: Midterm crit day. As a result of having trouble getting to sleep Monday night and staying at school late Tuesday night, I was exhausted all day Wednesday, which sucked because I love APC and like to be reasonably awake for my one and only class. As usual, we discussed the week's reading, which was followed by the crits. The ones that were projected were the worst for me as I could feel my eyes drooping. My own crit went well, with lots of suggestions as to what I could do next.

Ken had suggested making another appointment with Christina, which I did during one of the breaks.

Thursday: I spent the day editing photos for my project.

Every year the NSCAD Queer Collective puts out a zine, and this year's zine was one of the things we discussed at that night's meeting. I'm seriously considering submitting a piece that I wrote for my Writing for the Arts journal.

Friday: I met with Christina and told her what was going on (I've been emailing her periodically). She suggested making an appointment with a counsellor at Dal (NSCAD students have access to Dalhousie's counselling services), which I'll do on Monday.

I spent the rest of the day working on stuff for my project.

Saturday: I finally felt rested again (didn't sleep well Monday night plus a late night on Tuesday meant that I was running on less than fumes by Wednesday and it took longer than the usual two nights to recover). I spent the day at school and finally started the reading for this week.

Sunday: I edited the photos I'd scanned with the Imacon and finished the reading. I also did some stuff related to solving my current problem which ended up overwhelming me to the point that I felt hopeless--though getting a very late supper helped to make the bad mood go away.