Elusive Ink

Currently Listening
So Sorry
Feist



So I finished the re-design, for now at least. I have some other ideas I might try out soon, though. This one is pretty representative of my life right now, however, so it shall stay - at least for a while. It has been a week since my first "healthier living" post - and I haven't kept this thing updated like I'd hoped. Oh well, I'm doing alright, I've had a couple of things I probably shouldn't have in the past week but nothing too terrible, and I've exercised at least three times since my last post. Not my ideal situation - but most certainly better than I had been doing. And life is all about progress.

Things have been chaos around here for the past few weeks: Dad has hurt his back so he's been stuck at home for almost a week now. Which, I know is causing Mom a lot of stress. I don't know what (if anything) I can do about it though. So I'm just trying to help out where I can, but not to the extent that I stop making progress on my own to-do list. (Which, on Monday, had 187 things on it.) Last weekend I went to tour the Corcoran School of Art + Design, the college I had held as my ideal for quite some time. I was surprised to find that the open house did not impress me at all, quite the opposite actually. The school struck me as a bit pretentious, and their "selling points" were lackluster. They were very liberal, to the point that if you were conservative, or even moderate - you would most likely feel very out of place. They were not nearly as career based as I had expected, and the speaker's main "pro" for the school was that the seniors have the opportunity to hang the work of famous artists in the Corcoran Gallery. How is that going to help you in real life? "Oh, Annie Leibovitz told me to move a painting a little to the left once..." Sure. That'll look good on a resume. I decided, that I would give the school another chance rather than to make a snap judgment. So I went into the atrium where they were having the directors of different departments doing portfolio reviews. I was able to be towards the front of the line to talk with the director of the photography department...and her feedback was not impressive at all. She complimented my work quite a bit, but provided almost no feedback. She asked me "What I wanted?" and when I told her I wanted feedback on my portfolio the only advice she had to offer was that I organize it differently. On one hand, it was flattering, but on the other hand if the director of the photography department had no constructive criticism then what benefit is the school going to have for me? In fact, I told her I had always been very intuitive as far as how things should be composed but I didn't have a lot of knowledge in the technical side of photography. (I know the basics: f-stop, iso, etc...but it's all self-taught and not in-depth at all.) She looked at me and said "Well I guess that's a reason you would need to go to art school..." My reaction was "What? What does that even mean?" Does she think I shouldn't be going to art school? If she thinks I can make money as it is - please, do tell me how. Because I obviously haven't discovered the bottle of magic famous artist elixir in my medicine cabinet yet.

Despite all of this, I am glad that we made the trip - Molly was a joy all that day, and it definitely resolved in my mind that the Art Institute of Washington is where I'm supposed to be. In fact, I've got my application, and my admissions essay, and my scholarship essay notes all spread out on the table around me. I talked with my admissions person the other day and he's SO nice, and very enthusiastic. He seemed really optimistic that I would be eligible for a federal grant, as well as their senior scholarship. I must say...all of this has gotten me very excited.

Unfortunately, I have to actually finish my highschool courses first. Grr...just gotta push through for another couple of months and make it work. Just, slog through the last few chapters of Chemistry, and the last few tests for US history. It's do-able, but being so optimistic about my classes this fall has caused the motivation to finish my current classes to disappear from the face of the planet.

Academic things aside, life is chaos as usual. I'd hoped to post more - but I don't really have time at the moment. I have some brainstorming to post later though so hopefully it won't be so long between posts this time.