Rin: The Beginnings of Art Bootcamp

Oh man, I've been in school for about three weeks and I can tell it's going to be one long, grueling year. Long story short I'm Rin and I attend a New England art school. Considering the dirth of them, I can bet half my wallet that you could figure out which school in the next one or two of my posts if you know anything about art schools.

School right now has been an onslaught of studio days, homework, and sweet liberals where you can actually rest. Hopefully I'll be able to upload examples of work in the near future! Unfortunately, because of my schedule I might miss a posting day. Cross my fingers I don't.

First Aid Crises

For some reason I've been incredibly clumsy. Accidents range from: falling of the bed and skinning myself, stabbing my hand with wire from a sculpture while trying to sit down, leaning too far in my chair and toppling, spilling a full cup of tea on my roommate's 60'' x 40'' homework assignment (it was only a little bit, but we did spend some stressful fifteen minutes afterwards cleaning when we could be working late into the night).

The first one, dumbly enough, happened when my pillow fell from my bed and I tried to reach for it. My bed is lofted a good three feet in the air. I could see the ground rise closer as the bedsheet under me slid from the bed. I knew it was futile to grab the chair (which would later fall, too) and expressed it with one long "fuuuuu-" all the way down. It made for a good story and a battle scar on my chin.

Workload

Half of the workload depends on which set of teachers you got and the other half depends on whether or not you don't sleep. Just kidding, it's possible to juggle a social life, sleep, and work if you do intense crunch times on the weekends and liberal arts days. One of the students I know does one insane working session from Friday after class to Saturday evening and then clubs until the wee hours of the morning. Well, the caveat is that her teachers are from the saner side of our professor roulette. My roommate had the fantasically sour luck of having two insane teachers, one a bit more that the other. Giving cryptic advice and enormous workloads is just the tip of the iceberg when they have no mercy during critique sessions. Her drawing teacher literally said, "We don't have enough time to talk about everything so we'll only go over what's wrong." Some of the assignments include the before mentioned 60'' x 40'' contour drawing of an organic texture in charcoal. And by contour drawing I mean each line is a deliberate stroke and do that for the next seven hours on a piece of paper that may be taller than you.

Unfortunately, I'll have to stop this one here. It's a pity that my hello is cut short but homework calls! I just realized I should have explained how my not run-of-the-mill school works first given the unusual teaching style, but I guess that's my topic for next time.

Dot: Happy Tuesday

[092915]

1. Introduction

Nickname: Dot

Location: New England Region

Occupation: Student

I never thought I would be living in a place outside of California, but that is how life goes.

I want to give a little overview of who we are: we're five noobs from California, studied at same high school, but now all separated to our own universities.

In my case, I've spent total of 3 weeks in this college and everyday I'm discovering new shits and perks.

For example, in one of my smaller classes, some genius thought it would be great to have a pillar in middle of the classroom. Surprisingly, it makes people sitting on the back impossible to see the board.

This blog will be a log of all that adventures and drama. Hope you find this entertaining and informative.

2. Dorm

This college has a program that allows you to choose what kind of group you want to share the building with. You can either choose your to be with people from your major or just people who share same interest. For me, I chose something outside of my major because I had no desire to see the same group of people every where I go, sleep, clean, shit, drink, and study. Unfortunately, that has cost me living in the farthest building which takes me 10 min to 15 min to get to the classrooms. It does help get me to exercise, though.

My dorm looks like an average apartment building from the outside. Because of this characteristic, the inside is a bit smaller than the actual dorm buildings—which works for my advantage since I have less people to share the bathroom with.

The interior is the same old traditional dorm: carpet, one bathroom to unite us all, lofted beds with desks or drawers under, etc. The unique parts of this is that we have weird light mustard yellow walls with exposed pipes and rather high ceilings.

You can customize your space by moving around the furniture, or you can just live with what you have. If you are germophobic, it is nice to get a vacuum cleaner yourself, because your roommate will most likely not care about it.

3. Vacuum

This school has a policy that lets students to borrow vacuum cleaners from the RA (residence assistance) of your building. The weird thing is that usually the RA's office opens at 7PM and closes at 7AM. But for my building (it is collection of five different apartment/dorms) the RA comes around 9:30 PM.

Not only that, no one knows when will the new vacuum will come.

Thus, I've given up on getting that vacuum.

Dio: The First Legit (and obviously awesomest) Post

It looks like I get to start, which is amazing and awesome and a little nerve-wracking at the same time. But, anyways, here we go.

Dio here, currently going to school in a town a little ways away from LA. I won't be rating the neighborhood or safety of the school today, nor will I be prattering on about academics (though I do admit, my classes are hard). No, today I've decided to tell you about the food here.

Admittedly, food at most colleges is horrible, or at least sub-par. I've experienced this myself; three of the dining halls around here have typical, college-type food. The pasta is undercooked, the meat overcooked, and the halls overbooked. Those, though, have nothing to do with the one I'm mentioning today.

The one closest to my dorm is, on most days, a hit-or-miss. If you go for the Indian (Indian as in the country India, not the Indian Americans, who I refer to as Native Americans anyways) food, chances are you will be disappointed... unless you have no idea what authentic Indian cuisine tastes like. Then you'll consider it acceptable until you find out what you've missed out on. Anyways (I tend to ramble and go on tangents. It makes for better conversations), the burger bar normally serves fries that range from acceptable (the thick-cut fries) to amazing (the waffle fries and sweet potato fries). The burgers themselves are pretty good and make for a filling lunch, although the servings are a bit large for dinner. Normally, we also have the choice of pizza/calzone/various baked casserole-y things from the "Oven". Stay away from the pizza. Their dough is undercooked at times. The flatbreads are okay, and the other offerings are generally good.

We have a spot here titled "Exhibition", which always draws long crowds because they serve (three guesses, and two are out) more ethnic food! Yeah, no. Some days, it's okay, like when they have omelettes and make your own pasta and sushi, but other days, when they have "Beef Shabu Shabu Bowl" and the noodles are spaghetti noodles or "ramen" (again, made with spaghetti noodles), stay away. Stay far, far away.

The desserts here are okay, if you stick to the cookies. My group of crazies here have tried sampling every other dessert they have here, and the unanimous vote is: stick to the cookies. You will thank me for saying this, if you ever visit.

Wow, okay, that went a lot longer than I expected. This concludes Dio's (first) foodie post, and the first legit post of the 5 Case Studies blog. See you later (or not).