Art Ed Ladies at NYCH Gallery

Student teaching starts next week (1/20/15), and I suppose the biggest adjustment is going to be not seeing my Cohort three nights a week. After a jam-packed week at home for the holidays I returned to Chicago to get in just enough time with friends to make for a fulfilling break before I came down with the flu. I spent the first four days of the new year in my apartment, ravaging Netflix, and after eight years living in the city I had my groceries delivered for the first time. After some bizarre NyQuil induced dreams set in my high school and the condo my grandparents owned in Florida, and next to no human interaction for a few days, I was more than happy to return to class on January 5th.

A couple weeks of break was most certainly needed, though. I was glad to have been home long enough to paint my sister’s room–she’s fifteen and had long grown out of bubblegum pink walls. We spent a day drastically transforming it:

I maybe, sort of, projected my current state of many transitions into an intense need for my sister to have a space that better reflected her current self…but, I’m pretty sure she is happy with her improved room. It was some good sister-bonding time too. The time commitment of the MAT program has made for some sacrifices in family time for me and most all of my classmates. I’m looking forward to my dad, stepmom, and sisters coming up for my graduation in May.

I didn’t make it through everything I’d hoped during break, but I’m ready to just bust through the rest of grad school. During the J-Term we are taking a 2-credit class on Dimensions of Culture. Winter arrived just in time, and we missed a class due to severe cold, but, things have still been comparatively mild after last winter.

On Friday, January 9th, a show opened at NYCH Gallery in Pilsen featuring work by members of our Student Chapter of the NAEA/IAEA. It was curated by Mary Palmer, who has been interning there. Despite a windchill in the negative degrees we had a pretty good turn out.

As these sorts of events are continually keeping me in the art practice, I boosted my health with a DayQuil and soup regimen and my energy rebounded just in time to come up with two new paintings to complement an older one and put in the show.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I play D&D, and good news in the new year: my character has leveled-up. In my real life, having logged nearly 170 observation hours, passing the Art Content Test, getting a TB test, and marking everything off the check list, I have leveled-up too—to Student Teaching. As much as I’ve learned through coursework, I’ll learn the most in the classroom. It’s finally here. I’ll be at Senn High School for the first eight weeks of Student Teaching which means I won’t see the elementary students at Bell again until March. I’ve tried to get a little bit of time in with them in these final hours. One of my to-be students at Bell, a second grader, is a young lady I sometimes babysit and I’ve known since she was two-years-old. Her mom mentioned in a recent email “[Redacted] loved seeing you yesterday, although she did mention it was a bit odd to call you Ms. Crone.” It is a bit weird, and exciting. I’ve wanted to be a teacher since I was eleven years old, and growing into who I wanted to be when I grew up is much better than I ever even imagined.