I've been told that for the normal college student, finals are like hell. And while I can relate in some ways, I can honestly say that in most ways I really can't. In art school, there's normally a period of maybe the first week where you get some really minor stuff to do and you still have time to eat normal meals, sleep eight hours, bathe as long as you want to, and get ready for a new semester. And then because everything seems so minor, you put stuff off... and then you get behind. And then when the professors start piling it on, you're still swimming in the small stuff, so you're struggling to pull off the bigger stuff. And thus, the endless lack of sleep begins.
In normal colleges, you have homework, and you even have a few quizes, but you don't really study until you have to take the test. And you'd think, "Well art school is the same, right? You have a big project and then you have like a week or two to do another one."
There are classes like that. Sculpture is one of them. The beginning class consists of several very small projects to start out (not more than a couple hours each), and then three larger projects. All of them are back to back, but not overlapping. In the other departments, however, this is not the case. Many professors want you to learn a technique and practice it while they assign a larger project.
In painting for example, in a single week (all due the very next week), I was assigned a color wheel, five small paintings (each taking maybe 2-3 hours), and a large scale personal project (on 4' x 5' canvas), as well as to finish the painting I was working on in class. You may think, "Well, yeah, but you had a whole week." True. Very true, especially since I only had class once a week. However, keep in mind this wasn't my only class. And the class was oil painting. Yes "oil." Oil takes several days, even weeks to dry completely. Couple that with trying to transport it all, and you've got a massive pain in the butt. Now imagine that, but with more classes. While this was going on, one week I had to study for two tests, sculpt and make clothing for an armature character (from scratch) for my stop motion animation course, and finish carving the body for a self rendering in sculpture.
That said, it was the easiest semester I have ever had at this school.
The hardest semester I've ever had in this school was when I put two liberal studies together with a film course, a digital animation & effects course, and a digital photography class. There would be days when I would be on the computer doing homework for 20 hours, and be awake for a total of 23. And then I would get up the next day, take a shower and go to class, only to realize that I would have to do the same thing the next night. In fact, it was a normal ritual that between Tuesday and Thursday I hardly slept at all. And as finals approached and I had to film and edit, I found myself staying up even longer. The free time I had was spent sitting in on training sessions with actors and my fight choreographer, spending a few precious minutes with my boyfriend, and sleeping. What made it even worse was the intense nature of a professor in my major that I saw three times a week. I was so exhausted that I was ill for much of the semester. I ate about half of what I normally did, and I was constantly frustrated and stressed. There weren't enough hours in a day to get everything done, so I made time. I borrowed it from the nights I should've been in bed, and even a time or two when I should've been in class. And since I hadn't had time to clean my room in so long, I ended up doing my work on my bed instead of at my desk. I started to associate my bed with work, and I started to despise it... as crazy as that sounds. But no matter how crazy it got, things always end eventually. And while I'm still so crazy pissed about the last digital photography project I had to do (at the last minute) that to this day I have trouble looking at the images--even though a good lot of them include my boyfriend--life goes on. And while we always say, "If I could do it over, things would be different," the truth is that they probably wouldn't be. All you can do is work until you break down and cry, and then just keep working. Because when it's all over, regardless of professor's opinions, disses and encouragements from classmates, and the help of all the people who helped you along the way... the only thing that really matters is whether you like how it turned out. And no matter how sleep deprived and miserable you were, did you at least laugh a little in the meantime? Because no matter what the circumstances, I find that if a person has both love and humor in their life, they can endure. That's always how college should be. I know that's how it is for me.
~C.Mitchell
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