i realize this is annoyingly long
Well. Here goes.
So, if you don’t know the story, here’s the back part of it: my school almost just closed. Our accreditation was in serious peril, and according to a lot of people on the inside, it didn’t look good. So I started trying to find a back-up. My first plan: become a gypsy and never go back to school. Short-lived, and probably better that way. Next idea: apply at the Corcoran, if VI closed, and hope they offered me enough money so I wouldn’t be in debt for the next 20 years or more. So I started looking at the program and the school itself, and long story short, I started getting pretty excited about the possibility. After a few conversations with a few select people, I came to realize that maybe I should stop thinking of switching schools as a back up. I realized how fed up I am with VI and Bristol, and how fed up I am with myself at VI and in Bristol. I’ve lost all my drive and inspiration. I don’t honestly feel like I am being challenged anymore, either. I talked to a friend of mine that just graduated the photo department a while ago, and much to my surprise at the time, she admitted that after second semester of sophomore year, there was nothing that challenged or inspired her at all. Hey, guess what I just finished? If you guessed my second semester of my sophomore year, you are spot on. I’m sorry, what? I’m not going to be challenged at all for the next two years? And I’m paying how much for this? Fuck that. Well, at that point, I wasn’t really saying ‘fuck that.’ At that point, I was like, “Oh whatever, I’ll just figure out a way to challenged myself.” My present self now looks back on my past self and calls a resounding “Bullshit.”
But I digress.
Anyway. So I was thinking about it a lot, switching schools, that is, and the more I thought about and the more I lived on the Corcoran website, the more right it started to feel. Lately I’ve been really…not reliant on feels, but I’ve been paying a lot more attention to what feels right, you know? I can’t really explain it, but so far it’s been positive. So I started feeling really right about the Corcoran. And about being in DC. And about…change. It ended up that I started kind of, ahem, hoping VI lost its accreditation so I wouldn’t look like a traitor for maybe transferring. Because, dammit, I was never one of those people! Right? Shit, I looked down on the people that left, I thought they were sad, that they had given up, that VI was the best place in the world. Hah. But this is something I’ve recently come to realize about myself: if I have, at some point earlier in my life, been “sure” of something - whatever it is - there is a good chance that now I have spun in the complete opposite direction. If I have ever said, “I will never do insert-whatever-here,” there is a good chance I have now done it, save for hard drugs and, you know, whoring myself. Even at this point, I’m not going to say for sure that I am transferring, because I don’t want to jinx it. Call me superstitious, I’m not. I’m just going to avoid saying that I’ll never do things, because I tend to do them all the faster when I say never.
So this past Thursday, VI was let off probation and its accreditation is no longer in danger. As if I needed more proof that I felt like leaving, this news disappointed me more than a little. Because it makes my decision harder, dammit! And I fucking hate making decisions, especially when they are important! Ugg.
Now, I realize that maybe my fed-up-ness with VI and all that entails is just me, being a whiny bitch and not wanting to suck it up and deal. But I don’t think so. A lot of what makes me me is who and what is around me. I adapt myself and how I feel and think to my surroundings, both on purpose and subconsciously. Therefore, if people around me are uninspiring and uninspired (there’s a difference, and both are applicable here), and if the place I’m in is the same, I am stagnant. I don’t always like that this is how I work, but…well, what can I do? Answer: go somewhere that I’m not so fucking stuck and comfortable and sure about everything, so that I’m able to figure out what’s me and what’s everything else’s affect on me.
A lot of people might say that leaving doesn’t solve your problems, or other cliché shit like that. Well, that’s fine, because I’m not really trying to solve any problems, thank you, I’m just trying to kick-start my creative metabolism, as it were. And in this case, I kind of just know that the way I have to do this is to leave, or radically change my mindset in the place I’m already in. Which is still a possibility, I suppose. But hour by hour, I feel myself moving closer and closer to the first option. And the hardest, imagine that. Me, picking the harder option. Amazing.
I just want to touch on one little other thing before I stop ranting (I know this is a lot, and I really love you if you’ve read everything). I had this conversation with my friend Amy today (she just graduated VI photo…I mentioned her earlier), and by ‘this conversation’ I mean, I told her all of this. Just to talk about it and see what she had to say, because I value her opinion and advice, as I do everyone I’ve talked to about this. A key part of this ‘little other thing’ is that Amy is very much a…God person. Not like, she’s a god, but you know what I mean. She very faith-based, she prays a lot, and yet still finds a way to be pretty down-to-earth, which I respect. I should note here that while I’m not rejecting my faith at this point in my life, by any means, I’m…idly questioning and dissecting it and trying to figure out how the hell (if at all) I can fit the things I’ve consciously accepted about myself into it. Anyway. I was talking to her, and she (this is a serious summary of the conversation, but I’m trying to condense) stands firmly behind me in my hypothetical decision to leave VI. She knows exactly what I’m feeling, having felt it at that point in her VI career as well, and would have left if she a) had somewhere else she felt right about going, and b) wasn’t getting a lot more money than I am from VI. Now, almost everyone has been supportive of this whole thing, but it was different coming from her. It felt like even though my reasons for going are entirely me-based, maybe even God’s with me on this one? That doesn’t really do the feeling justice, that sentence, but you get the point. Maybe? Whatever.
This whole thing really isn’t a desperate plea for advice, but if you’ve got something you feel like I need to hear, please don’t hesitate to speak/write. Just go with the feeling, haha.
Shit, man, I’m tired.
So, if you don’t know the story, here’s the back part of it: my school almost just closed. Our accreditation was in serious peril, and according to a lot of people on the inside, it didn’t look good. So I started trying to find a back-up. My first plan: become a gypsy and never go back to school. Short-lived, and probably better that way. Next idea: apply at the Corcoran, if VI closed, and hope they offered me enough money so I wouldn’t be in debt for the next 20 years or more. So I started looking at the program and the school itself, and long story short, I started getting pretty excited about the possibility. After a few conversations with a few select people, I came to realize that maybe I should stop thinking of switching schools as a back up. I realized how fed up I am with VI and Bristol, and how fed up I am with myself at VI and in Bristol. I’ve lost all my drive and inspiration. I don’t honestly feel like I am being challenged anymore, either. I talked to a friend of mine that just graduated the photo department a while ago, and much to my surprise at the time, she admitted that after second semester of sophomore year, there was nothing that challenged or inspired her at all. Hey, guess what I just finished? If you guessed my second semester of my sophomore year, you are spot on. I’m sorry, what? I’m not going to be challenged at all for the next two years? And I’m paying how much for this? Fuck that. Well, at that point, I wasn’t really saying ‘fuck that.’ At that point, I was like, “Oh whatever, I’ll just figure out a way to challenged myself.” My present self now looks back on my past self and calls a resounding “Bullshit.”
But I digress.
Anyway. So I was thinking about it a lot, switching schools, that is, and the more I thought about and the more I lived on the Corcoran website, the more right it started to feel. Lately I’ve been really…not reliant on feels, but I’ve been paying a lot more attention to what feels right, you know? I can’t really explain it, but so far it’s been positive. So I started feeling really right about the Corcoran. And about being in DC. And about…change. It ended up that I started kind of, ahem, hoping VI lost its accreditation so I wouldn’t look like a traitor for maybe transferring. Because, dammit, I was never one of those people! Right? Shit, I looked down on the people that left, I thought they were sad, that they had given up, that VI was the best place in the world. Hah. But this is something I’ve recently come to realize about myself: if I have, at some point earlier in my life, been “sure” of something - whatever it is - there is a good chance that now I have spun in the complete opposite direction. If I have ever said, “I will never do insert-whatever-here,” there is a good chance I have now done it, save for hard drugs and, you know, whoring myself. Even at this point, I’m not going to say for sure that I am transferring, because I don’t want to jinx it. Call me superstitious, I’m not. I’m just going to avoid saying that I’ll never do things, because I tend to do them all the faster when I say never.
So this past Thursday, VI was let off probation and its accreditation is no longer in danger. As if I needed more proof that I felt like leaving, this news disappointed me more than a little. Because it makes my decision harder, dammit! And I fucking hate making decisions, especially when they are important! Ugg.
Now, I realize that maybe my fed-up-ness with VI and all that entails is just me, being a whiny bitch and not wanting to suck it up and deal. But I don’t think so. A lot of what makes me me is who and what is around me. I adapt myself and how I feel and think to my surroundings, both on purpose and subconsciously. Therefore, if people around me are uninspiring and uninspired (there’s a difference, and both are applicable here), and if the place I’m in is the same, I am stagnant. I don’t always like that this is how I work, but…well, what can I do? Answer: go somewhere that I’m not so fucking stuck and comfortable and sure about everything, so that I’m able to figure out what’s me and what’s everything else’s affect on me.
A lot of people might say that leaving doesn’t solve your problems, or other cliché shit like that. Well, that’s fine, because I’m not really trying to solve any problems, thank you, I’m just trying to kick-start my creative metabolism, as it were. And in this case, I kind of just know that the way I have to do this is to leave, or radically change my mindset in the place I’m already in. Which is still a possibility, I suppose. But hour by hour, I feel myself moving closer and closer to the first option. And the hardest, imagine that. Me, picking the harder option. Amazing.
I just want to touch on one little other thing before I stop ranting (I know this is a lot, and I really love you if you’ve read everything). I had this conversation with my friend Amy today (she just graduated VI photo…I mentioned her earlier), and by ‘this conversation’ I mean, I told her all of this. Just to talk about it and see what she had to say, because I value her opinion and advice, as I do everyone I’ve talked to about this. A key part of this ‘little other thing’ is that Amy is very much a…God person. Not like, she’s a god, but you know what I mean. She very faith-based, she prays a lot, and yet still finds a way to be pretty down-to-earth, which I respect. I should note here that while I’m not rejecting my faith at this point in my life, by any means, I’m…idly questioning and dissecting it and trying to figure out how the hell (if at all) I can fit the things I’ve consciously accepted about myself into it. Anyway. I was talking to her, and she (this is a serious summary of the conversation, but I’m trying to condense) stands firmly behind me in my hypothetical decision to leave VI. She knows exactly what I’m feeling, having felt it at that point in her VI career as well, and would have left if she a) had somewhere else she felt right about going, and b) wasn’t getting a lot more money than I am from VI. Now, almost everyone has been supportive of this whole thing, but it was different coming from her. It felt like even though my reasons for going are entirely me-based, maybe even God’s with me on this one? That doesn’t really do the feeling justice, that sentence, but you get the point. Maybe? Whatever.
This whole thing really isn’t a desperate plea for advice, but if you’ve got something you feel like I need to hear, please don’t hesitate to speak/write. Just go with the feeling, haha.
Shit, man, I’m tired.