Category: Academic

I’m awake, its nearly 7am and there are still no grades available for my digital photography class. I’m starting to wonder if the instructor made a mistake when he sent the grades to the registrar. Next chance to get grades will most likely be Monday.

I have been wrestling so much with course selection for Fall this time. I don’t know how many times I have made adjustments to the schedule. Today is the last day to file schedule changes for Gaston until "late registration" which is a day before classes start. The schedule currently looks like this:

I think I am going to attempt the semester at 18 credit hours, with 2 art studio courses. I might end up regretting this decision, but if I do, there is always the option to drop a course. The only course I feel I might regret is the Art History course, but only because I have had bad experiences with art history in the past. I could potentially be fun.

I am holding off on photography this semester since I just had Digital Photo during the summer. I think I need to calm back down from it and take things easy in that department, maybe taking some time to refocus myself and figure out what I want to do with photography in the long run. The goal of taking photography during the summer was to become more familiar with the aesthetics of photography as well as learn the technical details. I have accomplished both this semester, and I am very excited about that. Before taking another photography course I want to explore getting more interesting subjects and expanding beyond this "nature photography" thing that I seem to be doing a lot lately.

This is a representation of everything I COULD take for Fall. I won’t be taking 21 credit hours for fall. I have learned my lesson about things like that, its hell. To give a little insight into what the final schedule is likely to look like, lets go over what has to be here and what doesn’t have to be. First, I have to take History and Literature, or else, there will be a cranky registrar ready to kick my ass. Next… I don’t really want to take three or more studio courses, so at least two of the ones listed have to go away… I’m just not sure which two.

ART 281 – I am not that enthusiastic about Sculpture, it would be new to me, but not really something I know I want to take badly.

ART121 – Design 1 is a lecture/studio combo that is a required part of the art program, but I don’t have to take it this semester, and I don’t really have strong feelings towards taking it this semester.

ART 288 C – Ceramics studio is something I am very attached to taking, but I am worried that it currently isn’t assigned a time slot, so it could disappear completely or I might have it  at a time I don’t like. I should know more next week when the instructor replies to my email.

ART 288 PH – Photography studio I think I want to take. One week before the Digital Photography class ended I told myself that I wanted to take a break from photography, but now I don’t know. Do I? I went as far as getting the special section arranged so that I could take the course in a time slot I wanted… .so I would likely feel guilty if I didn’t take it.

Logically I should take ART 288C and ART 288PH, leaving Sculpture and Design behind. I feel weird having 2 open studio courses on my schedule with nothing else there. I guess I could still take either Sculpture OR Design 1, since with the way Photography Studio would be, there will be more than enough time for me to work on stuff from all 3, especially if I do Design 1.

As for CSC234… that’s going no where. I have registered for that class for about 3 semesters now. The first time I registered I dropped because I didn’t feel like I could handle the work in the course, but then the other times I got scared before the class even started. I am going to take it and take it seriously this time. Chris has asked me why I haven’t finished it, so I’m going to take it and finish it. Maybe I will write a cool app or learn some new tricks that might make GITI better. Either way, its a class that can only improve me.

I hope to weed this down to about 12 – 15 hours before school starts in a month.

Am I normally this impatient? I am trying to keep myself from checking the grade reports for each of my schools right now. I don’t know why I even check, the instructors have already told me when they will turn in grades. David will turn in grades for ART 390 (Digital Photography) on Wednesday, July 23rd sometime before noon, and my health course is supposed to be graded sometime on Monday morning. I think I got an A in both courses, but I’m not sure, especially since UNC operates on a system where an A- is possible. Nervous I continue to be.

I just finished my final assignment for Digital Photography. I kept telling myself I would get to the extra credit assignment if I had time… usually with that type of thing I let it go out the window and never get it done, instead I take time to recover and relax. I just finished the extra credit paper, so now there is nothing left to do. All assignments are done, or as GITI like to tell me: "No Assignments Exist".

This semester went too quickly. I feel like I need more to do. I need something to do other than continuously check the registrars to see if grades have been posted yet. I am going to miss these courses. It didn’t really hit me until earlier when I was reading my photography partner’s response to my "Final Project Statement" that I realized that my daily refreshing of the course website and my obsessive checking for comments from her were coming to a close. "It has been a privilege to be your "official" class critic for ART 390" she stated. It is a fairly simple harmless statement, quite nice of her to state even, but it makes me feel sad. Its almost like in Fall 2007 when my Drawing 1 class finished. I guess when you get a certain group of people together the bond becomes strong, or maybe its an art thing. Perhaps it is that simple, we trust these people with some of our most precious attempts at expression and we give them the power to lift us up or crush us, and in the end, they simply make us better, and stronger. I have never felt this from an online course before.

I wish I could go back and do it all over again.

What happens when you want to take a course at a school and it isn’t "presently offered"? What about when there is an alternative version of the course you are interested in, but it conflicts with other items on the schedule? Usually I would be generally fucked and have to wait until another semester, but because of the nice people at Gaston College, I have my own section of a Photography Studio course. ART 288PH is designated as the Art department’s "open studio" or "independent study" for photography. The photography instructor offered to guide me in advanced photographic exploration based on the requirements of ART265 (Digital Photography II), which has not yet been taught at Gaston. I didn’t realize until after the arrangement had been made and I was trying to register that the time slot didn’t fit on my schedule. I asked what my options were and it was arranged that I would be working with the instructor during one of his other courses. Usually that would be a permit-type event in something like Banner, but the system used by the NC Community colleges (WebAdvisor/Datatel) doesn’t understand a time override, so I have my own section of the photography studio course, ART 288PH 99 is all mine 🙂

I have finished HEA110, Personal Health and Wellness. I feel like I haven’t really learned that much, but somehow I managed to get 937 out of 1000 points (93.7 is the final numerical grade, becomes an A on the transcript). One course down, one more to finish off.

Most semesters when final projects and final exams come around, I don’t usually give much thought to those things, I just dive in and do my best at the time, usually scraping by on the deadline. I am really excited about my Digital Photography final project, and am trying to get everything in place and ready to execute it the best I can. I have a new lens coming in the morning, as well as a new memory card so that I can shoot in CCD-RAW format for greater image quality, while at the same time being able to use a greater sensitivity (which with other formats results in grainy images). A lot of my photos this semester haven’t been the best possible quality, because, well.. I wanted some sanity left. I am going to execute the final project with as much precision as possible.  I selected macro photography as my subject, which is something not really covered much in the course, so I have "ordered" a few books on the subject from the art library at UNC. I’m hoping they show up tomorrow with the lens so that I can get started.