that's over with

Lynn was right when she wrote, "know that 'this too shall pass', and a solution will slowly come into view" in her reply when I told her about the hell that was my life at that point. That's right: it's over. And that solution is a good one.

Monday: As usual, I spent the day at NSCAD, working on my project. I met Adrian in the computer lab that afternoon, as I was having problems getting the white balance right in some of my photos. I also got the lowdown on what should be covered in the contextualizing statement, as I wanted to start it on Tuesday.

I went to the MFA group show, Daily Jumble, and then got back to work.

Tuesday: I officially entered crunch-time mode, as I wanted to finish editing my photos and be ready to start working in Premiere by the end of that day. It was a long slog, and sometimes I thought that I wouldn't make my (self-imposed) deadline, but somehow I managed to do so. **whew**

I met with the counsellor from Dal, Joan, that afternoon (although my problem has been resolved, I still plan to keep my appointment for this coming Tuesday, as the skills that I needed to deal with my situation would be good skills to have), which was awesome.

That evening, there was a GA, which was mostly an update session: there were two meetings with the school's interim president and the students to discuss the closure of the Seeds Gallery (one of which was scheduled during afternoon classes, which is typical of NSCAD's prez, unfortunately). I wasn't surprised that very little was accomplished: what Dan asks and what the students need are sometimes complete opposite things.

Wednesday: After two and a half weeks, the perpetrator of the hell that I've been going through apologized. I was barely awake at the time and was running on less than eight hours of sleep, but I sleepily accepted said apology, using as few words as possible because I didn't have the energy to put together a full sentence.

I want to publicly thank everyone who has helped me through this difficult time. Extra-special thanks goes to Lynn, Helen (both of whom are readers of this blog--hi!), Becky, Ken, Adrian, Christina, Jake and Alex.

This week's lecture was all about graduating: life after NSCAD and MFA possibilities. Also, apparently you can now do a Ph.D. in fine art at a few schools. Whoa--that's a little too intense for me (I'm calling it quits--at least for a while--after I finish my BFA).

During the latter part of the afternoon, we had open studio time, so I went over to the Academy Building and started working on the video part of my project in Premiere (which I refer to in my head as "phase two"--phase one being the photographing and editing in Photoshop that I've done up to this point. Phase three will be when I export to Adobe Encore and start putting together the final product, which will be a DVD--that will start on November twentieth.).

Thursday: That day, I didn't show my face at NSCAD until around five. I spent the day making a double batch of soup (cream of tomato--yum!) instead. My time at NSCAD was more of a hangout than anything else, as I didn't get any schoolwork done that day. I did start reading The Ocean at the End of the Lane, though, and I'm really liking it. Neil Gaiman is one of those people, like Itzhak Perlman, Scott Brubaker or Yo-Yo Ma: when I listen to (or, in Neil's case, read) their work, I can instantly tell that I'm listening to/reading something by someone who really knows what they're doing and has been at it for decades. As there's a School of Extended Studies class in the computer lab on Thursday evenings, I'm reserving Ocean for those times.

Friday: I spent the day doing homework, including starting the final(!) reading for class.

Saturday: Once again, I disappeared into the basement of the Academy Building (after making a not-so-brief stop in the Photo Dept. to add a vignette to some of my photos), where the computer lab is. By the time I emerged and headed back to the Photo Dept., I was glad to do so: the monitors at Academy are completely different: they're Samsung, and the screens have a blue tinge to them, meaning that the calibration is completely different than that of the Photo Dept. monitors (Dell), which have no detectable colour cast.

Sunday: Today, I finished the reading and the rough draft of the contextualizing statement (due Wednesday). The statement's supposed to be seven hundred and fifty words long--I wrote nine hundred and seventy-seven. I'm laughing as I write this. However, I'd rather be faced with the task of dumping two hundred and twenty-seven words than be scrambling to come up with more to say.