Plant your hope with good seeds

I typically try to stay out of school drama because I'm around a decade older than these people and it's just dumb. But sometimes I get dragged in and in the instance of the girl submitting fanfiction for critique, of course I get dragged in. :\

( cut for drama )

Something's wrong with my car. I'm thinking it's something related to power steering, which is. Unfortunate. It's not drivable! So I'll be missing class tomorrow morning and instead will be calling all car guys to see if I can get it fixed in the next few days. If worse comes to worse, I can maybe carpool with a friend to class on Monday. But this really sucks. If only it waited two weeks! But nope.

I've been out of the video game loop lately (apparently Persona 5 is pretty great? That series isn't one that I'm super attached to - I've only played bits of Persona 3, although what I played was wonderful and I need to get back to it) but apparently Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia is coming out in May! Apparently it's a remake of a game that's considered a "black sheep" of the series but I'm cautiously optimistic and hyped about it. That might be because look at these adorable characters I can't wait to ship them all. Absolutely no one is surprised.

I took a day off today. I've been trying not to do that because honestly, I need all the hours at work I can get but. We've hired a new person and she's friends with the owners and those three get along really well but I don't really like any of them and this really highlights the differences between us all. Now to be fair, I'm related to the owners but you know, that doesn't really help so much. They talk about men and trucks and shit and I'm just like uh, okay welp.

We finished 13 Reasons Why and holy shit, what an intense ride. ( Spoilers ) I read somewhere that this show is opening a dialogue about bullying and suicide and I really hope that it helps some kids out there.

I have two presentations tomorrow, a friend is hosting her capstone event on Thursday, and I have two pretty massive projects due Monday. So. Thank God for Good Friday, I guess! It'll be a nice guilt-free day off where I can maybe get some work done. |D

We watched Logan yesterday for my nephew's birthday. Now, I'm not a huge X-Men fan, I don't really care that much about these movies. ( Spoilers )

Anyway, we're supposed to have some pretty severe weather today. We'll see! I really enjoy thunderstorms but I'd rather not have the hail or super duper high winds.

So last Friday we had our installed critique for our projects in graphic design. Two professors critiqued me; the ceramics professor (also the head of the art department) and the art history professor (also the museum director). It was a mixed bag! The major points ended up being:

Ceramics Professor: He basically made the suggestion that I'm not knowledgeable enough about the zodiac to do this project justice. He also questioned why I made Taurus a girl since Taurus is symbolized by a bull and bulls are male. HOWEVER, today my graphic design professor told me not to worry about that, to not worry about these kinds of gender absolutions. Also, she seemed to appreciate that I didn't take his criticism to heart; honestly I don't respect his opinion very much so I wasn't too bothered by why he said, haha.

Art History Professor: She was so, so enthused. She wanted me to add a border around the posters so they can be more easily framed. She wants me to finish the set and write some kind of narrative (she specifically mentioned a graphic novel/manga). She also told me to look into making figurines (!!!) of the characters. She loved my color palettes and was just really supportive and awesome.

SO YEAH. A mixed bag but the ceramics professor is a toolbag - one of my classmates made oil candles and he ruined one by turned it upside down and shaking it, which made her cry - so I'm absolutely going to listen to the art history professor, since she is so supportive and crazy smart and just awesome.

I've done some research into making figurines and wow, is that expensive. I also thought about creating dolls using Dollfie Plus dolls (the ones about the size of Barbies) but apparently those are no longer produced???? But then I thought about making plush dolls, which would be, in theory, a lot easier to do. I'm going to try making one and see how it goes; it might go pretty well.

Both art history professor and graphic design professor would like me to expand this so that it can be my capstone; so the posters, the cards, the figurines/plushies, apparel, stickers/buttons, stuff like that. I'm pretty excited!



Here's my display in the retail space! There's a spotlight on it so photos don't look so great, haha. The posters will be for sale but I need to redo the cards, since they're not really cut very well; plus it's only half and there's no reason to sell a half a deck of cards.

100% class stuff, original writing stuff, school stuff, so you may want to scroll on by, haha.

So the original piece I wrote (about a non-devout Muslim girl attending a Catholic school) was well-received by the professor, although I still only got an 8.5/10. I'm not really someone who worries too much about grades though, as long as I manage to actually learn something from the experience.

It's funny though, the differences in perspective going on. The class is primarily women (a class of twelve, there are eleven women and one man) and of course, most of them are 19-21 years old. The professor is a late thirties man. There were certain short sections of the piece that he circled and would make a comment about whether they were necessary to the overall story. However, a lot of the young women in the class circled the same sections and commented with variations of "I've totally felt this way before," "I can really relate," and "I really enjoy this glimpse into Amala's head."

Haha, it's interesting! I'm really enjoying this class, even though sometimes I feel like I don't have time to give each piece the time it needs to be written. Also, I'm terrible at writing short fiction but when turning in sections of longer pieces inevitable means I'm leaving something important out. :\ This is why I did so much better at script writing than fiction writing; our scripts needed to be at least 30 pages long while our fiction pieces have a maximum length of 7 pages.

ALSO. I've signed up for classes for next semester. It turns out I'm not going to be able to graduate next semester because godfuckingdamn it, this goddamn school refuses to hire a full time Spanish professor so there aren't any Spanish 1+2 classes that I was basically guaranteed to get. :\

So here's my proposed schedule:

Mon-Wed-Fri
Creative Writing: Non-fiction: 11:00am - 11:50am
Nature Writers: 12:00pm - 12:50pm
Multicultural American Literature: 1:00pm - 2:15pm (Mon and Wed only)
Elementary Spanish: 6:00pm - 8:10pm (Mon only)

No art classes! I have all the classes I need to graduation, plus frankly I'm over creating artwork for class. I want to work on my own stuff again! ;3; Plus, if I take these I'll have enough English classes to have an English minor! And if I take the Lit version of the Trillium class (the Lit and Art magazine) in spring I'll have a creative writing minor! So how about that. :D

Anyway, I really like the above schedule and even though it's heavy on English classes, I don't think they'll be nearly as grueling as upper level art and graphic design classes. :\

Today is kind of a mental health day because yesterday was rough. In graphic design, we had a ready, set, design project where we had to create and print out a brochure for the local county. From scratch. In an hour and a half. In painting, I basically just worked on a sketch of what I want to paint (Death! It's death. Friendly death). In creative writing, I was workshopped by the entire class and then in my four hour public speaking night class, I had to do a short presentation about myself.

SO YEAH, EXHAUSTED. Today I'm going to loaf and do enjoyable things, maybe. Fingers crossed, anyway.

Ooooooh my god, I am struggling so much right now, haha. School has been beyond stressful and this past week has been absolutely awful. The weekend wasn't really much better; last night I stayed up to about 3am working on graphic design work and I wasn't even actually finished. I ended up finishing up after class this morning, voluntarily missing my painting class to get this done. Everything's printed out, it just needs to be mounted on illustration board now.

HOWEVER. Because that class has been so damn demanding, everything else in my life is basically a bust, haha. I ended up leaving immediately after printing because I'm running off of approximately three hours of sleep, haha. Oh well. I'm hanging in there.

I'm also going through a huge low in terms of grief and grief processing, haha. It's making it really difficult to navigate through the slightest difficulty without, like, completely losing my shit.

My night class starts Wednesday, which is a bummer since it's a) public speaking and b) from 6pm-10:20pm. I have an 8am. That's a ridiculously long day, haha. But! Spring break is next week! Including the weekends, that's nine days of no school! And work is going to be closed a couple of days so I'll only be able to work three days! I just have to survive until then, haha.

idk how to end this but have this inked line art for the Rook and the King of my chess piece series. One day it'll be painted haha.

I don't know how it works for other colleges/universities but for mine, once you get into upper level painting classes, you basically start the semester making your own syllabus about a series of works you want to do. This semester I want to focus on mythology, both established and of my own design.

I have three pieces I want know I want to focus on; the first being nature as an anthropomorphic entity (for example, Gaia). Know who I am, tho, it'll end up being kind of grotesque, lmao. The second will be the idea of psychopomps, the entities that guide souls to the afterlife. And the third is a play on the tal of Apollo and Daphne. Instead of Daphne getting turned into a tree, she's going to turn in to a flock of hummingbirds (I know hummingbirds don't flock but!), with a central piece of canvas/paper and then smaller pieces fragmenting off of it.

However, I need two more! I can't decide what I want for them! Maybe Zeus and Ganymede? Maybe the idea of the three fates? HMMM. :\a

And for graphic design 2, we're developing a branding system for a product that we also must create and distribute in the retail space on campus. I asked my professor if something do to the zodiac would be appropriate - since everyone loves zodiac stuff - and she's was very supportive of the idea. She also mentioned tarot cards and I've always wanted to create my own deck, but not in less than four months, haha.

Anyway, it's really nice when I end up similar stuff for different classes. It helps me stay in the same mindset for them. :3

So this next week is the final week of school (barring the three days of finals that happen the week after next). On Tuesday I have a geology lab final practical/exam plus a friend's capstone/gallery opening to go to. On Wednesday I have a paper due for art history, a release party to attend for the lit and art magazine I was an editor for, and an art history final exam. On Thursday I have to attend another friend's capstone/gallery opening.

On top of these things, I have to work on my painting final, which we were only given a week to complete.

And then the week after next is just a geology final and a critique for painting.

Fuck.

Also today I was going to go get a head start on my painting so I headed to campus and the studio building was closed. Apparently it doesn't open until 2pm on Sundays. Absolutely ridiculous. I Was over there at 10:30 this morning! AAAAUUUUGHHH.

AND I managed to spill tea on my chromebook and in my purse today while driving. Well done, me. Well done.

However! Kiddo got to spend the night Friday night and we have a lot of fun so that was nice. ;3;