Forget New Year's resolutions; I think New Semester's resolutions are far more common around here. Sure, I'm trying to eat more vegetables and blog more and whatnot, but everyone seems to have come back resolved to go to bed earlier, keep on top of homework, get club stuff done ahead of time, and on and on. So far so good - two days in and I'm not behind on stuff yet!
This semester is promising to be considerably better than last. At the very least, all of my professors seem sane and/or awesome, which is already an improvement. The biggest hurdle will be coping with my schedule. On Mondays and Wednesdays, I have 3 hours of Silkscreen, 3 hours of Figure Drawing, and an hour and a half of Art History, with no breaks in between (besides the standard 15 minutes between classes). I knew it was going to be rough, but today left me totally drained (not to mention how surprisingly hard it is to keep up on that whole vegetable thing when my main meal consists of whatever I can get from the Huddle during a 10-minute break).
As far as the classes themselves, I'm pretty optimistic. Silkscreen will probably be interesting, if freakishly expensive ($200 lab fee + paper = youch). I'll probably end up printing madly in an attempt to get my money's worth out of it.
Figure Drawing is promising to live up to my expectations: awkward
and hard. It was one thing when we had professional models at SMC last year; I didn't know them and would never see them again. Having students do it, though, is just bad. It's so much more difficult to separate oneself from the subject when said subject is someone you see around campus fairly often. I'm trying to be charitable (since $20/hour is tempting to anyone who's facing $40,000 tuition), but as Johnny said, there's only so much benefit-of-the-doubt you can give someone who takes their clothes off for money.
History of Photography has a few things going against it. First, it's in the late afternoon, which is historically a sleepy time of day for me. Second, it's right after my 6-hour studio marathon. Third, it involves lots of slideshows in a dark room. Pretty much the only thing in its favor is that I really like looking at photos.
Music of the Catholic Rite looks totally awesome. We get to read about awesome stuff, listen to awesome music, go to an awesome conference...have I mentioned that it's going to be...awesome?
My college seminar class will be a bit of a shift. We're listening to and watching various stories -
The Odyssey, Wagner's operas,
Lord of the Rings, etc. This would be right up my alley, except that we're not reading them, and we're not allowed to bring notes or notebooks to class for discussions. For such a visual learner as I am, this emphasis on oral and listening skills is going to be challenging, to say the least.
Last but not least, there are my Friday classes, which would be....nothing. Probably sleeping late and not fully appreciating how this balances out my M/W schedule.
It would appear that I'm already failing at that "go to bed earlier" thing, but I just felt the need to give a little update. Besides, who knows - tomorrow may be a snow day!
Labels: Notre Dame
