Present Joys

Editor’s note: I’ve been keeping a usually-laconic digest of my schooltime activities since sophomore year. And now we’re back, for senior year!

• Had no monday classes at all, for the first time since starting college.
• Started out the school year tuesday morning with Intermediate jewelry, a class I am still slightly uncertain about keeping. It’s going to be a busy semester.
• Went straight from jewelry to friendship lunch, which we’ve tentatively moved from mondays to tuesdays.
• Started out wednesday with Brand and market development, the only class this semester where I get to see Jason and John, two of my favorite dudes. Our teacher, Jim Johnson, filled the entire three-hour class period with a lecture which he shared with a visiting professional.
• Met my dear friend Amanda for wednesday lunch. We have no classes together this semester. We spent time chatting outside while maintaining a safe distance from CCAD’s involvement fair thing. We even ran into Mr. Burleigh who, after I yelled to him, came over to visit. Very sweet.
• Finished wednesday by attending my only once-a-week class, History of cinema, which is held in the Canzani auditorium. I am reserving judgement for a few weeks; be sure to check back soon to see if my attitude has devolved into antipathy!
• Went back to Jewelry on thursday morning and worked the whole time to produce a very poor-quality married metal solder. At least the teacher is growing on me.
• While soldering, received a nice compliment on my trousers from Matt Flegle. I confess I was very excited.
• Drove off campus to have lunch with Jim Kucera, church pianist/friend/man of mystery. Had a nice time, got back to campus just in time to spend 15 minutes looking for a parking spot. There are going to be serious problems with parking this year.
• Finished off thursday with Ad, which was dismissed early due to wifi outage problems, but not before we’d done a very cute exercise
• Used my unexpected extra thursday afternoon time to go back to the jewelry lab to visit Chris Hill, former jewelry teacher/dear friend/excellent dancer. Then I went downstairs and got Dawson Kellogg to help me use the belt sander.
• Back to Portfolio and got to leave two hours early, again indirectly related to the school’s wifi outage. Get it together, CCAD.
• Hauled myself back to school on friday morning (a first for my time at college) for the second part of Brand and Market development; spent the whole class on a client briefing; received free pill containers. The visiting professional was back, and he is turning out to be quite a fun dude.

• Didn’t go to school at all on monday; instead, spent all day working on the White Castle presentation.
• Endured my last tuesday: sat through three hours of presentations in Ad and Advanced Type. Presented the mondo White Castle project.
• Turned in final work in Advanced type.
• Went to draping. We spent an hour and a half critiquing our final garments before Cheryl Steele dismissed us for an hour-long break. So I sat in the garden by the library and relaxed, then went back to say my final goodbyes.
• Had my very last class on thursday morning with Mr. Burleigh. I gave him a card then drove straight to Great Clips to get a buzz cut.
• Went back to campus on friday afternoon to see the newly-put-up end-of-year show. Ran into Ben Mahan.

• Turned in my final package design project, which I spent all of three weeks on. Mr. Hazlerig gave us an insta-grade™ and I got an A, so I’m not complaining.
• Did some homework at a table with Colleen, whom I hadn’t seen in ages!
• Had friendship lunch at the Hills. It was just me and Ian this week; some of the others were at a lecture about Family Guy, which I did not attend.
• Had a White Castle-themed meltdown with my team on tuesday morning.
• Made actual in-class progress on a project in Advanced Type. There must be something in the air this time of year.
• Took my “final exam” in Draping, for which I had to drape and create a pattern by looking at an illustration. I haven’t got my grade back yet, but I’m sure I did poorly.
• Forgot to take a crucial piece of draping homework with me, causing me much duress.
• Used my charisma at the CCAD library to access their button-making machine (for White Castle purposes, of course).
• Finally heard back from Cheryl Steele about the mysterious lost draping homework. Had to invade a senior fashion crit to get my work back. On the plus side, Cheryl Steele texted me, which was practically on my bucket list.
• Got annoyed at the warm weather all week.

• Had a very disappointing monday, consisting of an extremely dysfunctional package design class followed by an ill-planned friendship lunch. (Turns out the tiki bar on Grant is closed on mondays.)
• Managed to tweet about White Castle a whole lot, but didn’t do a whole lot of actual work. This project is shaping up to be quite challenging.
• Almost broke down into tears in Cheryl Steele’s class after realizing the true amount of work due. It doesn’t help that the class is full of fashion majors to whom I cannot relate on any level.
• Finished up my package design project in a hurry on wednesday night with copious amounts of glue gun, all so I could use the shrink-wrapping machine at school on thursday. You see, I have all these things planned out very carefully.
• Had some nice old-fashioned group critiques in Advanced Type both tuesday and thursday. It is nice to sit in a circle and talk about your work.
• Braunschweiger sandwiches.
• Worked on my final garment for Draping. Lots.
• Drove back to campus friday evening for the opening reception of the senior graphic design thesis show. Introduced myself to one of the senior ad teachers; ate cheese; awkwardly misunderstood sarcasm; criticized and lauded people’s work with A, my critique cohort.

• Worked on marble packaging in package design. Everything is due two mondays from now and it’s really starting to get tough.
• Skipped friendship lunch to hear Fran Yoshioka give a presentation about trend forecasting. Went home and wrote a two-page paper about the talk for Cheryl Steele, whose homework-assigning knows no limit.
• Stressed out in Draping trying to work on my final garment. It’s the most mentally taxing class I’m taking, and it’s an elective I had to get special permission to take. But it’s simultaneously so much fun!
• Got into a big argument about the color black with the fashion majors in my Draping class. (Because I think black is disgusting.)
• Had a very laid-back thursday morning. Jason was absent from our White Castle team, so me and Amanda talked for an hour and then she went home to work.
• Took thursday afternoon off of my internship to participate in a very worthless internship presentation thing. I sat in a room with eleven other random students who had also done internships; we all gave five-minute presentations about our experiences. At least it’s done.
• Spent two more hours in the fashion lab on thursday afternoon working on my final garment for Draping.