"This Diploma will protect me from haaarm..."

Okay okay! I'll update!

As probably most of you know, I graduated from Grand Valley on saturday! It was a wonderful day, weather-wise and otherwise-wise. The week preceding my graduation was really not so fun though. I spent last weekend partying with my senior friends and our significant others (Lauren tagged along sometimes to take embarassing cell phone videos), and only briefly thought about the papers I had to write that next week. That could have been a mistake. But it was fun!!! So, starting on Monday, I began my frantic paper writing. 4 papers in 4 days! It should be a reality show. I spent more time at the school's downtown library than I did sleeping. Kind of depressing. Let's see, all told I was at the library for 27.5 hours between monday at noon and thurdsay at 10. I finished my fourth paper thursday at midnight:30 at the guys house, then stayed up way to late to celebrate and got up friday to work. After work on friday I went to help my friends move and stayed there until 9. It might therefore shock you that I did not last more than 20 minutes into Bride and Prejudice. I woke up and they were happily ever after. Oh well.

So graduation...ha yes. Such brilliant plans we had. My family left AA at 10, planning to arrive at my house early enough to eat lunch and relax. Well at 10:10 they called to say they had a flat tire. The tow truck took plenty of time and Lauren and I got phone call after phone call with increasingly depressing news. It was eventually decided that the family would just meet me at the restaurant after the ceremony. I was a little sad as I got into the shower. Ok, a lot sad. But fortunately my boyfriend's wonderful father came out to the van and loaned his minivan to my family and waited with our van until the tow truck finally came. So they made it just in time to the arena and got seats on the main level. Phew!

I of course had several mishaps before the night was out. I almost graduated with my sunglasses on....I was wearing them into the building and gave Lauren all my things (purse with regular glasses included) to hold at their seats. I didn't notice until my friend started complaining that she'd worn her sunglasses in and wear was she going to put them? And then she said "Oh, you wore yours in too Lindsey, ha ha....uh....Lindsey....uh?" To which I replied "NO!!!" I tried to chase Lauren up the stairs but the arena staff wouldn't let me by without a ticket. Uh HELLO!?!! I'm in a BLUE GOWN!!?! I can't SEE without my real GLASSES!!!?? But alas, Mr. Van Stickupthebutt would not let me pass. So I frantically approached various official looking people with similarly crushing results until finally one guy who was handing out our name cards, I'll call him Mr. W-Z, said he didn't see why I couldn't go up and took me to the elevetor. "Besides" he said "I have a nametag and you have a graduation gown, they can't kick either of us out!" I liked Mr. W-Z. So I randomly picked an entrance into the arena and guess what...it was dark in there! And I had my sunglasses on! And if I took them off....well yes. What a problem. The cute old usher man came up to me and said "Looks like yer in the wrong place young lady..." He then noticed my tears and sunglasses. "Uh, who ya lookin fer?" "My sister, she has my regular glasses and I can't see without them!" "Ah, so yer choices for graduating are blind or looking like yer blind?" Chuckle chuckle. I did not appreciate his humor at that point in my life. He continued, slightly mollified "Uh, what does she look like?" After several minutes of frenzied descriptions of Lauren...I heard a voice calling "Lindsey? Lindsey?" My lovely sister, and my lovely glasses were four rows in front of me. Thank you Jesus. It would probably have taken a while for me to laugh at that one...

So. I Hate Art School.

Don’t worry! I passed my review. I hate art school because nobody ever has anything nice to say. I’ve try to combat this by making it a point in crits to always bring up something that I think works. Sigh. So anyways, I presented my two projects, Over the Rhine posters, ads and t-shirts and Elizabeth Gaskell's novels. Then Lorelle, Chris and Rick proceed to pick the crap out of them. A lot of the stuff was good, helpful but uh hello???? Where were these comments during my previous FOUR crits??! How can my bookcovers have suddenly in the last WEEK become unrelated, lacking purpose, typographically uninteresting, conceptually vague, and harshly colored? Gads! None of those things came up during my crit on monday, in fact the visiting professional said he wouldn’t change anything! Granted, he only spent 10 minutes looking at them as opposed to an hour, but still if they’re such obvious and glaring issues, you’d think they’d have come up earlier. Dang it all. I appreciate their comments about my Over the Rhine stuff more, since I can see that I was wrong in some of my decisions. I feel like beating myself for some of the things I didn’t notice. Then to top it all off there was a fricking widow on my artist statement that I missed because I had to change fonts last night. It’s like they expect everyone to be this amazing genius that never struggles with design issues. Well excuse me for being born Lindsey Mishler instead of Paul Rand! Yet another review that leaves me feeling inadequate and let down and choked up and second fiddle and third string. Telling myself I passed is not extremely comforting. And to top it all off, Lorelle used the word. The ONE word that has had the ability to reduce me to tears since elementary school. That’s right, the D word. Disappointing. My work is disappointing. The last seven years of my life are disappointing. Geesh! I’m welling up just typing it!

Good heavens but I can whine. You know what, I don’t care. I have a job, I have a week to fix my stuff for the show, and I have a nice warm bed at home waiting for me to come take a nap in it. Too bad I also have four papers. Hey but I also know that graphic design and being an “artist” is not the be-all-end-all of my existence. Pretty sure that God’s not going to look at my portfolio. Sometimes makes me wish that I’d majored in literature or film studies or physical education.

OK!!! I’m done whining. I’m going to go home, make some hot chocolate and then go out with some friends for a bachelorette party tonight. Look out San Chez and Mojo’s!! Here comes a hormonally charged female who is questioning her career path!!!

Oh, here are some rather dark photos of my book covers. The ones that are disconnected etc.

From Holy Week to Hell Week

My fondest greetings to my reading public. I am going to hopefully avoid the amount of dumb quote corrections by avoiding entirely any contractions.

Well, it has been quite some time. 21 days in fact, far too long. Since my last post, I have gotten a job, had two separate spring breaks (one for GVSU and one for preschool), and helped moved my sister and my grandparents.

Speaking of preschool, today was our first day back from break and it was oh so special. Not only did Grace fall apart (as usual), but Ruby who is typically cheerful and rambunctious! Grace collapsed during gym when we were “playing” soccer. That was quite the experience in itself, they did not really comprehend the concept of teams, and spent the entire 8 minute game chasing the ball and kicking it. The two goals that were scored were purely accidental, I do not place much confidence on Sammy’s grasp of her duties as goalie. Grace was so upset about not getting a purple (dude, what were those nasty yellow mesh shirts called that we used in gym at SSA?) thingie and being on the Blue team instead, she said she did not want to be on the ugly color team. So I tried to tell her to sit by the wall, just as Ruby came running up to me and grabbed my leg sobbing that she missed her mommy. I guess this is what happens when 3 year olds spend a week and a half away from school. So I had to comfort and coddle two sobbing toddlers that both wanted me to hold them and were fighting over that very privilege. I definitely did not pick either kid up. And I use the term “sobbing” generously, since they were both faking.

Speaking of Hellish, this week is quite busy for me. Yesterday I had my final crit for my book jacket project (I will post pictures eventually), so I spent the entire day yesterday resizing and changing my files (I had to buy 6 blank journals to put my jackets on, but there were only 5 at one bookstore so I had to go 30 minutes across town to the other one just to buy one more stupid book). Uh anyways, all these parenthetical tidbits are distracting me. I managed to get them printed and on the books before class technically started, but it was close. We had a visiting designer in for crit, which was nice. He was very helpful and really liked my designs, which made me happy and less depressed about Friday, the day of my senior review. Gads you say! Another review! Yes, the third and final review of my distinguished art school experience. I present my two senior projects to a faculty panel and then they ask me questions and then they kick me out of the room and talk about me, and then they invite me back in and tell me if I can graduate. Lovely.

So that was yesterday. Since I spent so freaking long on those jackets I did not find myself adequately prepared for my medieval symbolism presentation today on the revival of Medieval Sacred art ideals in the 1950s. I thought it went awfully, but I talked to the prof about it for a while after class and she said I was over reacting and it was not as bad as I thought. Phew. So maybe I did not fail. Right now I am going to head home and revise my Over the Rhine posters and ads, and make a minor tweak to one of my book jackets and then maybe drink a beer. If anything is on sale at the Meijers at which I shall stop on my way home. Tomorrow I will be preparing for my Capstone presentation on thursday (yeah! another presentation!) and probably getting all my stuff printed for senior review. Gads. Thank God my teacher is allowing me to turn in my FOUR remaining papers at the end of the semester.

Until I blog again, caio.