On This Week or My Title Is Less Than Imaginative

So this week’s post is going to be a little short. It will also be in order of importance, “not awful” and, “on time”. I was writing something else but it wasn’t really going anywhere so I figured I would just start over. To give you an idea of how terrible the other post was, I spent more time cleaning the dirt of of some little grooves in my keyboard than I did actually writing. After an hour of that I had two and a half (barely) passable paragraphs, a small pile of crud, clean keyboard grooves, and one small raisin I found on the floor. Fear not loyal reader(s), I did not eat it, but I wanted to. That’s how bad it was. This state of affairs is in no way indicative of my week’s progress.

What I have done is nearly completed my first week of classes and as predicted by one eight year old and several full grown folks, everything is just fine. I managed to find everything I had to find, although Hagey Hall is, and ever will be, a warren. Also someone, I’m blaming architects here, has also constructed several awful looking buildings right in the middle of the all the old routes I used to know. The line at the book store wasn’t too bad and they now has these snazzy yellow reusable bags which when carried seem to signal your willingness to field all kinds of questions from strangers about the size, speed, and general should-I-go-now?-ness of the book store line. I still feel like am outsider when I wander through campus, but it’s definitely starting to feel a little homier.

imagesMy main concern about going back to school was feeling like a doddering old eland in a world full of springing gazelles. Now I realize of course that I am not actually an old man and I sure anyone who is at least five minutes older than I am is rolling their eyes as they read. Which is fine, roll away, just don’t hurt yourself. I may not actually be old but sometimes these other students make me feel like I’m from another planet. These are the kids that came of age on Harry Potter or think that Twilight is a viable stand in for Dracula when studying literature. My inner snob cringes but as one young woman pointed out Dracula is hard to read and one vampire is as good as another. Even if they sparkle.

I have procrastinated for too long and I have a bus to catch so I’ll get down to brass tacks: feeling old is entirely my problem. I spent a few hours Wednesday talking to the folks in my new studio class and we talked about all kinds of things. When we talked about pop-culture or some other newfangled thing I felt like a helpless geezer, but when we talked about the coming semester, what the profs were like, or what kind of art things we wanted to make, we were all the same age. As students we all come from the same place, even if I haven’t visited there in a while. They have the same apprehensions that I do, and collectively I think we find the idea of 4th Year Studio Thesis daunting. I have to remember that “studentness” is the level I have to seek connection on, at least in the beginning. Maybe one of them will think Bob Dylan has more talent in his toe jam than Miley Cyrus would have if she could twerk for a million years, and maybe not. We’ll see. I also still have to see what the classes position on Bob Ross it. I hope it’s favourable.

Bob_at_EaselSo there it is. It might not be profound, and it’s probably obvious, but it’s my useful lesson for the week and it’s what you get. It is also probably better then 2000 words on Waiting for Godot. Although, I will do that if requested. I do have Godot on the brain. Also there is a really good show that opened at the University of Waterloo Art Gallery (UWAG) last night and you should check it out. Just saying. Have a good weekend.

D.

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