so what?

If I thought my life was bad - and anyone reading this blog over the past few months will know I've been downright miserable and whiny - it is not as bad as the people all over the arts building this morning frantically trying to finish their projects before the 12 pm deadline. I was there at about 8:30 to drop off my sculpture and the classrooms were full and people were squatting in the hallways painting and gluing and drawing. I was a little surprised. But perhaps they are the true artists and their muse didn't move them until now.

I was going to take a picture of all the sculptures together, but, sadly, I just wasn't that impressed with them. Maybe because they were all jumbled together in a corner or, I don't know, they just seemed rather purposeless. Take an object, make it big didn't seem to really promote much creativity or something. I can understand the prof's idea - to take something ordinary, make it human-sized and then you interact with it differently, but there is still a dimension of 'so what' to it. So it's a large shoe or an eraser, so what? Maybe my problem was that most of them (all of them) weren't 'beautiful' - I love sculpture, but I don't just love it because it's big, I love it for the lines that are created for the eye. But, I long ago came to the conclusion that this prof loves 'ugly' far more than 'beauty,' so she'll probably be pleased. Ugly, doncha know is a higher art form.

Anyway, I went back and put a bunch more 'down' on my feather which improved it a bit. I took a picture of it hanging up and it had way more 'presence' as a mobile - which is how I'd envisioned it all along. The picture's a bit blurry.

Then I went and wrote what will probably be my hardest exam. I spent 12 hours yesterday studying and trying to study - i.e. sitting and staring at my books and papers because I was too tired to pick up my pen. But I think I will have done okay on that exam - not stellar, but okay. Then I got a paper back in the same economic geography class and I got an A+ on it which astounded me. I thought that paper was a) pretty boring and b) pretty well stated the obvious. But I guess sometimes it is only obvious to the person who did the research. She thought I should present it at an upcoming geog conference. I'll think about that.

I know this sounds like a humble-brag, but it kind of worries me when I hand in something that I really think is nowhere close to being great or cutting edge and it gets a really good mark. I don't know what I question more: my standards or theirs.