Finals are like Dementors
I could explain what my past week and a half of Finals/Final-projects-that-take-the-place-of-exams has been like and how I have felt for this time, but I don't have to, because someone else already did it better.
Basically, I have been doing pretty much nothing but studying/sewing/drawing/coloring/homework/projects for the past week and a half, periodically going so mad from lack of sleep that I rebel and go reread Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince or go play Snood for an hour or so until the nagging guilt and stress overtake the desperate need to do something not related to school.
Basically, this is exactly how I've been feeling this past week, minus the cleaning and stuff, because I'm been doing so much school stuff that everything else has taken a backseat. I haven't cleaned, done laundry, cooked, done dishes, checked the mail, etc in a good week and a half. I haven't even been able to clean up after myself. My living room is littered with papers, notes, bits of fabric, sewing pattern paper, empty bottles, etc. My bedroom is strewn with colored pencils and clothing because somewhere along the line my clothes hamper threw up. And my art studio room....
It's all quite scary.
Even though I'm just like Allie Brosh in that blog on a normal basis, this week especially has been like that, except with homework. I have done homework near constantly for the past week, except when I reach that point where I've spent hours doing this and I know I'm just going to have to spend more hours on it and more hours on other things and more hours on other other things until it is all done but I can't stop because this is due tomorrow, so I have to finish it now so I can work on that thing due the day after so I can work on that other thing due the same day as that and then I rebel because ohmygod I NEED TO NOT HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THIS RIGHT NOW.
And then I go internet. Or read. Or something.
I got pretty much everything done, though. I'm basically done with school for the semester as of today, I've just got to right a 1-2 page paper and email it to a teacher, and then I have to find out how to register for classes next semester because no one told me that registration was going on, and at the time I was too busy and stressed out to do it. But classes are done. Thank goodness.
I think I'll probably have good grades overall. I only had two actual tests; the rest were final projects. I'm not worried about Clothing Construction or Design and Illustration, I've had consistent A's all semester in both; I feel pretty good about Fashion Textiles, though I had a couple of missing assignments that may bring me to a B, but it was only 2 assignments and I've done well on everything else. I think 3D Design might end up as a B; I did pretty well on 3 of the 4 projects, and I'm not terribly worried about the paper, but the 2nd project we did kicked my butt; I never could wrap my head around it and come up with something that was good. That C- might drag me down.
Intro to Fashion is the one I'm most worried about, though. I had a few missing assignments from when I was sick that I never had a chance to make up, and while I did well on the stuff I turned in, and my big project was great, I'm not sure that last test grade is going to do me any favors. I got a 98 on the first test, an 80 on the second, but this last test, which was over the beginning of our delving into History of Fashion (which we'll then take as a full class next semester), well...
You know how, when you study for a test, you sort of glance over all the materials and notes and work out things like: "Okay, about 90 percent of my notes are on this thing, so that'll definetly be big on the test." "We talked forever about this stuff, so there'll probably be a lot of that on the test." "We spent a whole class on that, that'll probably be an essay question..." and, of course, you also think things like, "Hm, this only takes up about 5% of my notes and not even 10% of what we talked about in class, so there'll probably only be a question or two about that."
And from there, you decide to spend the bulk of your time studying that stuff which seems most likely to be the bulk of the test, and that little stuff that was just sort of mentioned you just glance over it enough that you should be able to answer the one or two multiple-choice questions that might show up on the test about it, but you don't waste a lot of time studying it because you never spent much time on it in class....
Because it totally makes sense to make 90% of the test about the stuff that only comprised 10% of what we studied.
When I was studying and looking over my notes and stuff, taking into account the usual format of this teacher's tests and the nature of the material, I figured that there would probably be most of the stuff on what each ancient civilization wore, and whether it would be men or women who wore it, and that sort of thing, seeing as that was what we talked about; there would probably be a lot of matching--matching pictures or descriptions of the clothing to the civilization they came from; matching vocab words with their definitions, seeing as we looked at a lot of different garments with special names. I thought we'd probably need to know what an Etruscan tebenna was, and probably that it was a forerunner of the Roman toga. We'd probably have to know things like which specific people were allowed to wear which Roman garments--that only married women could wear the stola; that only Roman citizens could wear the toga. What a schent is, and that Egyptian men wore them. We'd probably have to know the difference between an Ionic and a Doric chiton, and which one came into popularity first. We'd probably need to know what a calasiris was, and that Egyptians began wearing them during the New Kingdom period.
Because hey, that's what we studied.
Our teacher gave us a printed-our version of her power-point lectures so we could take additional notes on them during class. Out of those, for each civilization, only about two or three slides are not about what they wore and all those things I just mentioned in that last paragraph. Those two or three other slides were a tiny bit of vague historical context that usually consists of era dates (New Kingdom: 1575-1087), or informative gems such as "The Egyptian civilization grew up along the Nile River." Seeing as she didn't elaborate much more during class, I assumed the historical context would probably be maybe a question per civilization, or not even all the civilizations since some of them we had less context than others.
Then the test.
And it was pretty much all historical context.
There was one matching section with about seven questions where we had to match the description to the illustrations of people in the historic clothing, and then a puzzling section at the end where we were supposed to design a modern outfit/look inspired by the historic clothing for each civilization, (which should have been fun and easy except that it was more like, "What the hell?"), and then the rest of it was short-answer questions asking about historical context and why was Egypt so stable, and how is that reflected in the clothing, and explain specifically how political conflict or lack thereof affected clothing in each civilization and where do we get our history of the Sumerians from and is it accurate and OH MY GOD WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?
See, here's the thing: knowing exactly how what was going in in history around the people affected what they wore and how it changed what they wore would be an important thing to learn and a perfectly reasonable thing to test us on in a History of Fashion class....
.....if we'd actually studied it.
In 12th grade I wrote my U.S. History term paper on how things like World War I, Women's Rights, gaining the right to vote and celebrating new equality with men contributed to the arrival of the flapper era; how these led to women bobbing their hair and taping their breasts. Historical context can be really important.
But we didn't talk hardly at all about historical context. What contributed to Egypt's stability? Gee, I don't know, Mrs. Teacher. All the history we mentioned about Egypt was how when whats-his-face took over he invented a new religion, packed up the capital city and moved it out into the desert, and basically overhauled the entire former Egyptian way of life, and that's what started the New Kingdom era, and the only reason that I know all of that stuff about Akenaten or Akehaten or whichever dude came first and was married to Nefertiti is because I remember it from my Art History class last year that wasn't even at this school but is the only reason I really knew any historical context about this stuff. What contributed to Egypt's stability? As far as what we studied in this class, they didn't have much stability.
I can't remember the last time I took a test where that much of the test was comprised of material the teacher barely covered. I can't decide which is more ridiculous: this, or the time in AP Calculus where the teacher (by his own admission) gave us a type of problem we'd never done in class before on the test. Seriousy? Who introduces something new on a test? That will feed into your grade? That will affect your GPA? That will decide where you get to go to college.
Maybe I BSed my way through it enough to scrape together a passing grade. Somehow, I doubt it.
But now it's all done. I was going to buy a little Christmas tree today and decorate it, but I think I'll do that tomorrow. I went to Home Depot after class to get some other things and was going to check out their trees, but they either had big trees, tiny trees, or fifty-dollar Martha Stewart poinsetta-decorated table-top trees. Um, no. So, I went to Hobby Lobby, because they have a ton of Christmas stuff, and it's a great place to get ornaments and stuff, so I was certain they'd have Christmas trees. (Because I'm sure I've seen them there before.)
Well, if you want a $400 12ft tree or a $200 9ft tree prelit in multi-colored lights, or a $24 unlit 3ft tree, you're maybe set, although I didn't even see boxes or little slips of claiming-one-of-these papers for them. Seriously, Hobby Lobby?
Wow, am I cynical today. I need to go clean my disaster-area of an apartment before it eats me. And I should probably make dishes a priority so that I can maybe prepare myself an actual meal. Or at least something more nutritional and substantial than the pumpkin pie, Oreo cakesters, baby carrots, and air I've been surviving on over the last week whenever I would remember that my body needs food to survive. I seriously can't remember the last time I actually fed myself. I've just kind of been shoving something small down whenver I got really hungry to shut the hunger pains up until I would have time to make an actual meal, except I wouldn't ever have time to make an actual meal, and it wouldn't matter if I did have time, because all my dishes are dirty and I have no food because I haven't had time to go grocery shopping.
....It's been one of those weeks.
One last thing: If I see one more commercial for Eclipse, my head is going to explode.
Basically, I have been doing pretty much nothing but studying/sewing/drawing/coloring/homework/projects for the past week and a half, periodically going so mad from lack of sleep that I rebel and go reread Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince or go play Snood for an hour or so until the nagging guilt and stress overtake the desperate need to do something not related to school.
Basically, this is exactly how I've been feeling this past week, minus the cleaning and stuff, because I'm been doing so much school stuff that everything else has taken a backseat. I haven't cleaned, done laundry, cooked, done dishes, checked the mail, etc in a good week and a half. I haven't even been able to clean up after myself. My living room is littered with papers, notes, bits of fabric, sewing pattern paper, empty bottles, etc. My bedroom is strewn with colored pencils and clothing because somewhere along the line my clothes hamper threw up. And my art studio room....
It's all quite scary.
Even though I'm just like Allie Brosh in that blog on a normal basis, this week especially has been like that, except with homework. I have done homework near constantly for the past week, except when I reach that point where I've spent hours doing this and I know I'm just going to have to spend more hours on it and more hours on other things and more hours on other other things until it is all done but I can't stop because this is due tomorrow, so I have to finish it now so I can work on that thing due the day after so I can work on that other thing due the same day as that and then I rebel because ohmygod I NEED TO NOT HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THIS RIGHT NOW.
And then I go internet. Or read. Or something.
I got pretty much everything done, though. I'm basically done with school for the semester as of today, I've just got to right a 1-2 page paper and email it to a teacher, and then I have to find out how to register for classes next semester because no one told me that registration was going on, and at the time I was too busy and stressed out to do it. But classes are done. Thank goodness.
I think I'll probably have good grades overall. I only had two actual tests; the rest were final projects. I'm not worried about Clothing Construction or Design and Illustration, I've had consistent A's all semester in both; I feel pretty good about Fashion Textiles, though I had a couple of missing assignments that may bring me to a B, but it was only 2 assignments and I've done well on everything else. I think 3D Design might end up as a B; I did pretty well on 3 of the 4 projects, and I'm not terribly worried about the paper, but the 2nd project we did kicked my butt; I never could wrap my head around it and come up with something that was good. That C- might drag me down.
Intro to Fashion is the one I'm most worried about, though. I had a few missing assignments from when I was sick that I never had a chance to make up, and while I did well on the stuff I turned in, and my big project was great, I'm not sure that last test grade is going to do me any favors. I got a 98 on the first test, an 80 on the second, but this last test, which was over the beginning of our delving into History of Fashion (which we'll then take as a full class next semester), well...
You know how, when you study for a test, you sort of glance over all the materials and notes and work out things like: "Okay, about 90 percent of my notes are on this thing, so that'll definetly be big on the test." "We talked forever about this stuff, so there'll probably be a lot of that on the test." "We spent a whole class on that, that'll probably be an essay question..." and, of course, you also think things like, "Hm, this only takes up about 5% of my notes and not even 10% of what we talked about in class, so there'll probably only be a question or two about that."
And from there, you decide to spend the bulk of your time studying that stuff which seems most likely to be the bulk of the test, and that little stuff that was just sort of mentioned you just glance over it enough that you should be able to answer the one or two multiple-choice questions that might show up on the test about it, but you don't waste a lot of time studying it because you never spent much time on it in class....
Because it totally makes sense to make 90% of the test about the stuff that only comprised 10% of what we studied.
When I was studying and looking over my notes and stuff, taking into account the usual format of this teacher's tests and the nature of the material, I figured that there would probably be most of the stuff on what each ancient civilization wore, and whether it would be men or women who wore it, and that sort of thing, seeing as that was what we talked about; there would probably be a lot of matching--matching pictures or descriptions of the clothing to the civilization they came from; matching vocab words with their definitions, seeing as we looked at a lot of different garments with special names. I thought we'd probably need to know what an Etruscan tebenna was, and probably that it was a forerunner of the Roman toga. We'd probably have to know things like which specific people were allowed to wear which Roman garments--that only married women could wear the stola; that only Roman citizens could wear the toga. What a schent is, and that Egyptian men wore them. We'd probably have to know the difference between an Ionic and a Doric chiton, and which one came into popularity first. We'd probably need to know what a calasiris was, and that Egyptians began wearing them during the New Kingdom period.
Because hey, that's what we studied.
Our teacher gave us a printed-our version of her power-point lectures so we could take additional notes on them during class. Out of those, for each civilization, only about two or three slides are not about what they wore and all those things I just mentioned in that last paragraph. Those two or three other slides were a tiny bit of vague historical context that usually consists of era dates (New Kingdom: 1575-1087), or informative gems such as "The Egyptian civilization grew up along the Nile River." Seeing as she didn't elaborate much more during class, I assumed the historical context would probably be maybe a question per civilization, or not even all the civilizations since some of them we had less context than others.
Then the test.
And it was pretty much all historical context.
There was one matching section with about seven questions where we had to match the description to the illustrations of people in the historic clothing, and then a puzzling section at the end where we were supposed to design a modern outfit/look inspired by the historic clothing for each civilization, (which should have been fun and easy except that it was more like, "What the hell?"), and then the rest of it was short-answer questions asking about historical context and why was Egypt so stable, and how is that reflected in the clothing, and explain specifically how political conflict or lack thereof affected clothing in each civilization and where do we get our history of the Sumerians from and is it accurate and OH MY GOD WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?
See, here's the thing: knowing exactly how what was going in in history around the people affected what they wore and how it changed what they wore would be an important thing to learn and a perfectly reasonable thing to test us on in a History of Fashion class....
.....if we'd actually studied it.
In 12th grade I wrote my U.S. History term paper on how things like World War I, Women's Rights, gaining the right to vote and celebrating new equality with men contributed to the arrival of the flapper era; how these led to women bobbing their hair and taping their breasts. Historical context can be really important.
But we didn't talk hardly at all about historical context. What contributed to Egypt's stability? Gee, I don't know, Mrs. Teacher. All the history we mentioned about Egypt was how when whats-his-face took over he invented a new religion, packed up the capital city and moved it out into the desert, and basically overhauled the entire former Egyptian way of life, and that's what started the New Kingdom era, and the only reason that I know all of that stuff about Akenaten or Akehaten or whichever dude came first and was married to Nefertiti is because I remember it from my Art History class last year that wasn't even at this school but is the only reason I really knew any historical context about this stuff. What contributed to Egypt's stability? As far as what we studied in this class, they didn't have much stability.
I can't remember the last time I took a test where that much of the test was comprised of material the teacher barely covered. I can't decide which is more ridiculous: this, or the time in AP Calculus where the teacher (by his own admission) gave us a type of problem we'd never done in class before on the test. Seriousy? Who introduces something new on a test? That will feed into your grade? That will affect your GPA? That will decide where you get to go to college.
Maybe I BSed my way through it enough to scrape together a passing grade. Somehow, I doubt it.
But now it's all done. I was going to buy a little Christmas tree today and decorate it, but I think I'll do that tomorrow. I went to Home Depot after class to get some other things and was going to check out their trees, but they either had big trees, tiny trees, or fifty-dollar Martha Stewart poinsetta-decorated table-top trees. Um, no. So, I went to Hobby Lobby, because they have a ton of Christmas stuff, and it's a great place to get ornaments and stuff, so I was certain they'd have Christmas trees. (Because I'm sure I've seen them there before.)
Well, if you want a $400 12ft tree or a $200 9ft tree prelit in multi-colored lights, or a $24 unlit 3ft tree, you're maybe set, although I didn't even see boxes or little slips of claiming-one-of-these papers for them. Seriously, Hobby Lobby?
Wow, am I cynical today. I need to go clean my disaster-area of an apartment before it eats me. And I should probably make dishes a priority so that I can maybe prepare myself an actual meal. Or at least something more nutritional and substantial than the pumpkin pie, Oreo cakesters, baby carrots, and air I've been surviving on over the last week whenever I would remember that my body needs food to survive. I seriously can't remember the last time I actually fed myself. I've just kind of been shoving something small down whenver I got really hungry to shut the hunger pains up until I would have time to make an actual meal, except I wouldn't ever have time to make an actual meal, and it wouldn't matter if I did have time, because all my dishes are dirty and I have no food because I haven't had time to go grocery shopping.
....It's been one of those weeks.
One last thing: If I see one more commercial for Eclipse, my head is going to explode.