There’s a girl in one of my classes that I eat lunch with sometimes. She was in my jewelry class last fall, then in my textiles class the following winter semester. Now she’s in my ceramics class. When I first met her, she had shoulder length hair. During that semester, she cut it short and I complimented her on it. She told me, “I cut it because of you.” Apparently, she liked my short haircut, so she decided to get something similar. I thought that was kinda neat.

When we had textiles together, I sort of took her under my wing and we became friends. At some point our conversations led to career goals, and I learned that her goal was to get married and have children. College was just something to do until then. She learned that I was married with children, and not working. It was her ideal lifestyle and she started saying, “I want to be you.” Not, “I want the same life you have” or even “I want your life” but “I WANT TO BE YOU.” And it was cute. At first.

Fast forward to now. I’ve been growing my hair out for my sister’s wedding next May. She noticed it looked longer and I explained the wedding thing to her. She told me that she too has been growing her hair out. For a wedding. In May.

Okay… That could be a coincidence. Lots of people get married in May and lots of women grow their hair out for the wedding. Right?

She missed class on Monday because she was sick. When she returned to class on Wednesday, I noticed she had a new hair color. Take a guess. Yeah. It’s now the same color as mine. I have no problem with anyone cutting and coloring their hair to look like mine. Afterall, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right? The thing that concerns me is that she keeps saying, “I want to be you.”

I can kind of understand where she’s coming from, but if sometime in my future something seems not right with me, would someone please check into that?

I visited the career center at my school today to get some tips on building my resume. The career counselor there gave me some good advice, but unfortunately, she didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. Her information was all about how to write and format my resume. I already know how to write and format a resume. In fact, I spent several years in a job where much of what I did was write and format resumes. My problem is content. I don’t feel like I have any skills or experiences worth mentioning. Obviously, saying I have NO relavant skills is a bit extreme, but the truth is, I’m having a hard time coming up with anything. How do I take a bunch of basic skills from a bunch of common jobs and turn them into something worth talking about? I think the only way to answer that is for me to search the job descriptions and see if anything there matches up with my previous experience.

Question number two is, now that I’m working on going back to work, should I cut my hair short again? The more I look in the mirror, the more I think the answer will be YES.

I’ve been enjoying my sketchbook assignments in my drawing class so far. Assignment #2 was implied line. My first attempt didn’t start off well, but once I got going, I liked my results. I’ve come to like points.

My second attempt, which turned out better than my first.

And a third, which I like even better.

And I’m currently working on full size (18×24) which may take a few more days to complete.

I recently learned that a a person from my old volunteer job finally admitted to trying to make my time there unpleasant. I always sort of felt that she had it out for me, but I was often told by mutual friends that she was just misunderstood. I never got along well with this woman, but once I left the job, I pretty much forgot about her. That is, until recently when I learned that she’s still trying to discredit me.

Our clients knew she was tough, and she was feared by them. When the clients had problems, she was the last person they wanted involved because of both her reputation for being tough, and the fact that she held a lot of authority within our organization. Our ideas always differed on how things should be run. I was never in any position to implement my ideas, but I never let an opportunity go by to voice my opinion.

But like I said, I left my job, and never gave much thought about her, though I still had an interest in how well the organization was surviving. This recent news justified my suspicions about the trouble she used to make for me though, and I went on a rampage trying to get our mutual friends to sympathize with me. Yeah, well that backfired. I pretty much only made myself look like a bickering, petty, disgruntled ex-employee. And I felt pretty bad about getting involved in this little war again when I have no connections to the organization anymore.

I was given an opportunity to bring myself back into balance yesterday after class. My last class ended at 8:15 p.m. Thunder clouds had been hanging overhead all day, so it was very dark and threatening to rain by the time I got outside. On my drive home, I passed by a hospital a few miles away from my campus. When I turned the corner in front of the hospital, I saw a woman walking with a very young child. After a slight hesitation for my safety (since I was still a little freaked out from walking across a dark, deserted campus alone), I offered them a ride home. The little boy was two years old and was running a fever when the woman found a ride to the hospital earlier that day. She didn’t have a ride home, so she decided to walk. Walk. In the dark. As it threated to rain. With a sick child. FOR FIVE MILES.

Thinking about it today, I’ve forgiven myself for my cattiness because I did this good thing. I hope I’ve restored my karmic balance, or whatever.

Drawing is very difficult for me. It’s difficult and I have a lot of anxiety and insecurities about it, but I want very badly to learn to draw with ease.

My first large drawing was an 18×24 still life rendered in pencil. During the class period, my professor walked around the room to look at everyone’s progress. For some reason though, she never managed to get to my side of the room, or more precisely, me. She never notices me and she always forgets my name. (I’m not used to professors NOT knowing my name. I talk loudly, I participate a ton, and I’m an A student. I think my anxiety about this class has hidden some of my natural “notice me!” tendencies.)

On Tuesday, we had our first class critique. We were each given a number which we tacked to our unfinished drawings as they were hung across the wall of the room. There were five or six drawings before mine. Each was given a fair amount of time, and each was given some useful feedback. When she got to the drawing just before mine, she pointed out a blank area which she called “dead space.” Then she went back to some of the previous drawings to show the dead space in those drawings too. Then she skipped ahead to my piece, pointed out the dead space, and moved on. Moved. On. I didn’t get the useful feedback I needed. So not only was she having a hard time noticing me, but now she was having a hard time noticing my drawing. (Okay, yes, maybe I’m taking this a little too personally, but my confidence level in this class is already very low!)

Today, she handed back a written assignment we were given on the first day of class. She told us that we did as well as she expected. That meant that 80% of us had to redo the assignment. There are only about 20 people in the class, so, doing the math, only four people wrote the paper correctly. I might not draw well, but you can bet I was one of those four. I think it was this paper that finally got me some attention. She learned my name!

After the papers were handed back, she explained our next assignment. It’s a self-portrait using a curved reflective object of our choosing. We’ve also been assigned a small ink drawing in our sketch book. I worked on the self-portrait for a bit before getting completely frustrated with it and switched over to my sketch book. My first attempt in the sketch book didn’t go well, so I carefully cut the page out with my Xacto knife and started on a clean page. The purpose of this sketch book is to help us get over our fear of drawing by just doodling constantly. But so strong is my fear of drawing that I couldn’t even let myself doodle. A few moments into my second attempt, I was ready to scrap that one too. Unfortunately, I noticed her sort of hovering around my table, so I tried to look like I was thinking. But she called me out on it.

“How’s it going, Kerrie?” (She really knew my name now!)
“Uh… is it cheating if I don’t like what I’ve drawn and I use my Xacto to cut out the page and start over?”
“Well, yeah, but I wouldn’t know if you did it. The idea is to get loose and just draw. I’m not grading quality. I’m grading how much you do.”
(I’m starting to feel a little better here, so I ask her to take a look at my still life drawing. She must have sensed my insecurity because she said…)
“This part here is really very good. This part of the background isn’t bad, but it looks a little rushed. But this front is really beautiful. Let me show you some things you can try to improve the background.”

Beautiful! She called part of my drawing BEAUTIFUL. I mean, I know it’s not really “beautiful”, but maybe… it was pretty good. And for someone of my skill/talent level, maybe it really WAS beautiful. Either way, she did me a HUGE favor by telling me something positive.

Drawing II
Assignment 1: Look at some weird photographs of my professor’s drawings and paintings and write what I see.

19th Century Art History
Good news: I will get the essay questions for the exam prior to the exam to prepare a note card to use on exam day.

Bad news: I have to write TWO papers on artwork I view AT THE MUSEUM. Which is over 90 MILES AWAY.

20th Century Art History
I think I’m starting to “get it” when it comes to modern art. I’m not sure I like it exactly, but I’m understanding it better. The five page paper for this class counts as one exam grade. My professor drops the lowest exam grade. I interpret that as “five page paper is optional.”

Ceramics
Assignment 1: Biscuit molded bowl. Basically, make a hump of clay and carve into it. This fired piece will be the mold for the inside of a pressed bowl. I have to press six bowls total from this mold; three stoneware, three porcelain.

Take-home assignment: This is new. I’ve never had a take-home assignment in ceramics. The assignment is a carved porcelain charm. Starting with a lump of clay weighing approximately 2 lbs., I am to carve an intricate design into the entire surface. The difficult part is that the carving should be narrative. Ugh. I have no clue what I’m going to do for this one yet. And my carving skills? Not so great.

My professor is making up the rest of the assignments as we go along. Just today, she asked if we would object to doing a big vessel for our next assignment. Working in clay is a lot different than working in other mediums. (If you’ve been reading my blog since my last ceramics class, you’ll probably remember this.) With most mediums, you work on a project from beginning to end without interruption. With ceramics, you can start a project, but you have to stop many times during the process to wait for clay to harden. It’s during these breaks that we start into our next project. Oftentimes, we have four or five different projects going at once. Wednesday will be our third day of class, and many of us will probably be starting some part of our third project out of maybe six or seven total projects. Crazy, huh?

D*Con, in a nutshell, was good. It wasn’t my favorite year of the four I’ve been there, but I’m still glad I went. I met one person who I’ve been wanting to meet for a long time. I met another person who I wasn’t sure I would like, but after meeting her, I was very happy that I did. I spent some time with three very unlikely people, which turned out to be a good thing. And there was one person who I very much wanted to see, but couldn’t make it this year.

New experiences? I was offered pot for the first time in my life. I did not partake, but the offer was new to me. I was selected to go through the V.I.P. security check on my return home from Atlanta. I was mildly disappointed at the lack of thoroughness as they searched my luggage though. I was very chatty with the passengers seated next to me for both the flight to Atlanta and the flight home.

The worst part of the trip was the vertigo I started to experience two days after I arrived in Atlanta. I experienced the same thing two years ago, and it kinda spoiled the trip. A week later, I’m still not over it, despite the medication my doctor swore would work right away. The dizziness I can’t get rid of and the drowsiness from the medication have made my first week back to school interesting.

Some people I met…

Trinity

Mr. Incredible

Christine and The Phantom

Darth Vader

Batman