Since that last entry was pretty heavy, I wanted to follow up with the aftermath of it. Last time around I filled you all in on the mildly-overwhelming semester that I have been having, from losing my four legged best friend to family illness. I have been on constant follow-up mode with my faculty since then, and am happy to say that things are getting better.

I met with both of the teachers that I was pretty far behind in class with. With my class on Monday nights, Future of the Book, I was able to work out a pretty intense schedule to bring me up to date by the end of the semester. This week I have to squeeze in a presentation about zines, which I’m actually pretty excited about. Due to the pacing of the class, we had to cancel a field trip to Quimby’s Bookstore, so I am taking this as an opportunity to fill that void. Following that up, I have two papers to hand in, one next week and a longer one on the last night of class. No incomplete, just a lot of work for a few weeks.

For my Wednesday night class, I am taking an incomplete. This gives me until the last week of January to get caught up with course work. Can I breathe a sigh of relief at the massive amount of weight that has been lifted off my shoulders? I can and will.

I also had follow up meetings with my department head and with my thesis advisors. The department head mostly wanted to give me a pep talk and light a fire under me to get more work flowing. That’s all good and fine, but trust me, I’m feeling the pressure. It’s really great to hear that I have so many people rooting for me to succeed, though.

As for the advisors, well, they want to see more work too. That meeting was a good chance for me to sit and have a candid conversation to catch up on how my family is doing and especially how I am feeling now that I am getting back on my feet. We workshopped a bunch of public awareness/intervention stickers for my Post-Punk Parenthood project. The goal is to have the language worked out for fifty different designs by the end of the semester. We’ll meet up a couple more times to finalize a schedule and weed out the best designs from the bunch. Honestly I’m having a LOT of fun working on these designs. Now that I’m thinking about it, I have really worked my way through all of the areas of my program now. I started out focused on papermaking, then pursued a book path with the start of my zine, and now I’m focusing on a type/print based practice with these stickers.

I’m starting to feel really good about my practice again. The stress is still there, but it is feeling way more focused. I really want to thank my faculty for having my back during all of this turmoil I have been facing. It’s great knowing that they are there and really want to get me to a place where I can be a success as I exit this program in a few months time.