School, school and more school
It really is astonishing to me how school EATS YOUR LIFE. Or, perhaps more accurately, makes it impossible to focus on anything that isn't school, because I'm the sort of person who doesn't really like having tasks hanging over her head -- I either want to get it done right now, or I end up engaging in a lot of avoidance behavior trying not to think about the fact that I have to do it. And school is all about a constant series of tasks that you work on in your own time. I'm realizing why the only period in my life when I wasn't actively working on creative projects was my first three years of college. It's just hard to concentrate on them. I am developing a sudden, intense respect for people who can manage to go to school and, say, update webcomics or write novels at the same time. Compared to being in the working world, I don't think I'd say that college is hard. It's a different kind of of hard, though -- it's lower-pressure in some ways (you can roll out of bed, scrabble into a sweatshirt and slouch off to class; you can miss a class if you want to and it won't hurt you financially; you can do most of your work at home) but there's also no real ceiling to how much effort you can put into it. And while it's easy to tell myself beforehand that it doesn't matter if I make a C here or there -- all I have to do is pass my classes; it's not like anyone is checking up on me -- when it comes right down to putting it into practice, it's not as easy as all that.
This weekend I need to write a 5-page paper on the Tlingit, study for an exam in History of Photography and spend a lot of quality time decorating my bandsaw box for Sculpture. I'm thinking woodburning + watercolor should look nice; I did some tests on a piece of scrap lumber and it's really a lovely effect.
I'm still massively intimidated by that sculpture class, even though working with the bandsaw is turning out to be fun. The only thing dumber than spending the entire semester stressing about doing poorly in the class, though, is ... well, take your pick:
- stressing about it all semester and then doing fine after all.
- stressing about it all semester and then doing badly anyway.
- stressing about it all semester, working my ass off and *still* getting a poor grade.
The only thing that makes sense is to relax about it and then deal with whatever grade I get. But it's difficult to convince myself that.
(This entry is also posted at http://layla.dreamwidth.org/167204.html.)
This weekend I need to write a 5-page paper on the Tlingit, study for an exam in History of Photography and spend a lot of quality time decorating my bandsaw box for Sculpture. I'm thinking woodburning + watercolor should look nice; I did some tests on a piece of scrap lumber and it's really a lovely effect.
I'm still massively intimidated by that sculpture class, even though working with the bandsaw is turning out to be fun. The only thing dumber than spending the entire semester stressing about doing poorly in the class, though, is ... well, take your pick:
- stressing about it all semester and then doing fine after all.
- stressing about it all semester and then doing badly anyway.
- stressing about it all semester, working my ass off and *still* getting a poor grade.
The only thing that makes sense is to relax about it and then deal with whatever grade I get. But it's difficult to convince myself that.
(This entry is also posted at http://layla.dreamwidth.org/167204.html.)