Bittersweet end of the Semester
The end of the semester is always so bittersweet. There’s so much joy in appreciating the new perspective you’ve gained from the semester’s studies, putting the heavy book you’ve been lugging around to its final resting place on your bookshelf, and letting yourself get some rest, too, now that your assignments are complete and you no longer need to zip around from class to class. At the same time, there’s a sadness in that you’ll miss the community you’ve built with your peers and professors throughout the semester.
I find the end of the semester to be particularly poignant at art school, as every teacher in my studio art classes seems to turn into a motivational speaker during the last weeks of class. The most extreme was my professor Mark from my first fall semester who put us through a sort of drawing boot camp, where he acted like a drill sergeant or a football coach, quick to criticize and let us know when we were being lazy. It wasn’t until the last two weeks of class that he let it slip that some of us had talent, and that it was our duty to share this special gift of ours with the world.
I had three painting classes this past spring semester where the teachers sent us off with parting reflections and pressed us to pursue our artistic careers. If I wasn’t living in the murky shadow of the 15-page paper due on the last day of classes that I had procrastinated to the point of discomfort, I probably would have burst into tears of joy during the final critique for each of my painting classes. I’m posting images from my Color Workshop class, where we displayed all the assignments and exercises we had done for the class, and then stood up and presented our work to the class. One student who I thought was exceptionally talented, soft-spoken and rather shy came up to me afterwards and told me that my work was really good that that I should definitely continue painting.
June 24th, 2011 at 4:14 pm
nice work em! congrats on your first year!!