So the semester ended. That came and went really fast for me this time around. Finals week was a little on the strange side for me this semester. Out of my four classes, I really only had two finals-y things.

As you all know, I had a lot of struggles getting through this semester. My Monday night class, Future of the Book, was one of my bigger ones. I had fallen extremely far behind in it due to all the times I had to miss to be with my family earlier in the year. There were moments where I thought I would fail the class, a time where I begged for an incomplete, another where I considered petitioning for a late withdraw. I ended up working out a truncated assignment schedule to get caught up by the end. It was intense. Multiple papers and presentations over the course of a few weeks. I finished them, and it’s done. AND my grade has already been posted for the class. I did better than I had expected.

My Wednesday class I ended up taking an incomplete for, so I have until the end of January to finish that up. I’m taking a few days as a breather before diving into that.

Thursday night, I had the last meeting of Thesis 1, where we met with he possible new curators of our gallery space and talked about the marketing strategies for our thesis show. No stress there, since all of our assignments had already been completed.

Then on Friday I had my big critique for Shaping Solid Light. SSL is a gateway class on the Interdisciplinary Arts and Media MFA side of the department. It clears students to have access to lighting and projectors. The class was fun and very intense. It met for the last five weeks of the semester. In that time you learn the basics of lighting programs, how to install lights and projectors, and come up with a final project using these items and techniques. For my project, I decided to experiment with taking zine cut and paste aesthetic and applying it to projection. I used some of the stencil portraits of punk parents I made last year and projected images of their families and live performance videos over the top of them. I was pretty pleased with the end result and feel like this is a nice first iteration of a piece for my thesis installation. This crit ran from 1pm to 6pm on Friday. I also had come down with the flu and an ear infection. It was a LONG day.

Long story short, I’m going to enjoy this break from classes as much as I can this year. After all, it’s my last winter break as a student.

Pro tip: wash your hands and cover your mouths. This flu that is going around is AWFUL. I also hope you all get a chance to relax with family over the holidays. Stay warm and healthy everyone!