All the Activities Went Crazy

Sorry for the late update. The week was really busy.

Not with classes. No, those are going normal.

The real thing that kept me going crazy thins week was all the clubs I’m in and extra things that had to get done.

This year I’m in 4 clubs, that’s 2 more than last year, and it seemed that this week they all had something crazy going on.

Ministry of Magic had a fundraiser on Wednesday selling butterbeer and t-shirts. That lasted from 11-3 but thankfully it wasn’t that hot of a day. 

After that I went to see my counselor to keep her in the loop about graduate school. I brought the binder I had made with all the school information organized as well as the notebook with the summarized notes. She was very impressed with the amount of research I have done, my organization, and my timeline for the next year concerning application. I will be more or less applying to all the schools I find.

By the time that was all done I had 3 hours of down time before going over to the Goldstein Kitchens and helping the AIGA club bake cupcakes for the fundraiser sale that was happening the next day. It lasted another few hours and by the time we were done we had 168 cupcakes and I had very sore feet.

Moving on to Saturday I had a very early morning. The acapella group was doing our first community event by signing the Star Spangled Banner at the beginning of a heart and stroke foundation walk. We had been told that we would be singing at 7:15 so we wanted to meet as a group to drive over together at 6:30 meaning I was up around 5:45am. Normally I’m up early for a college kid - 8:30 - but this was insane.

We got to the location and found out that they changed all the times and we weren’t needed until 8:30 so we decided that we would go down the street to the farmer’s market to get some food. Somehow our conductor started talking with this old man who found out we were a singing group. He asked us to perform at his little restaurant for his wife and that he could get us some good community exposure. In the end we promised to stop by if we had people after the other event.

The Star Spangled Banner went well but our numbers got cut in half as 3 out of 6 cars left to go back to school due to work deadlines and the already hour delay. Nearly half the people left were new-bees and we didn’t know any of the arrangements. In then end we had 15 minutes to learn the some Some Nights before we headed back to meet the old man.

We did surprise his wife a lot as we just walked through the door singing. Only one table had people but she was so happy that it didn’t matter. We latter learned that it was the couple’s anniversary.

Saturday night also has anime club and so my day lasted until 1 am - ending up o be about 20 hours. The good thing was that we had 7 new-bees there that stayed the whole time! Things are looking up for this club.

Finally I got to Sunday. A meeting with my partner for some light Design homework, acapella practice - we started learning a Harry Potter song - then supporting the Mixer club and my friends in it by buying some fried rice at their Maid Cafe fundraiser.

I hen had to get dinner ready. This week we had baked chicken parmesan, penne pasta with sauce and some french bread. For dessert I made a cookie that was a peanut butter dough with smashed pretzel combined with a chocolate chocolate chunk and caramel dough baked together. There was nothing left. 

So yeah, the clubs are killer sometimes but really, I’ld be so bored without them.

It's Only Been a Week?

If I had to sum up the week in one word it would be LONG. Honestly, looking back it seems crazy to think that some of the things only happened a week ago.

First off let’s start with school.

Not interesting really.

Art History is boring - modern architecture is ugly in my opinion. Animation is slow - we started making animated postcards but everyone got really confused in about 30 seconds so we had to slow down. Concept is nothing - we’re going over how to do a good 1 minute pitch. Psychology is non existent - since it was 9-11 this week we talked about what everyone was doing that day. And finally Design which is just confusing - I like my branding designs one minute, hate them the next, fix it, love it again, think it looks to student like, then change it again. It’s a crazy cycle.

Anyway, I mentioned 9-11.

Yeah I know, with all the talk it has gotten it’s getting to be a bit old...well I think it is.

We talked about it a bit in Psych. Our teacher brought her husband in who talked about loosing his brother - he worked in the second tower a floor above where it was hit. We then went around and talked about what we remembered from that day. It really depended on where you were from. Those of us from the tri-state area remembered those from Florida or the West Coast. On top of that we were in what 4th, maybe 5th grade. Soon college kids won’t even remotely understand since they were too young to remember.

For my family we’re just happy. Happy that my Grandfather is alive. He was suppose to be flying that day - on one of those planes I think too - but his boss pulled him over a day earlier at the last minute so he wouldn’t be flying on his birthday. 

This year he turned 78.

Personally I don’t remember much. Kids got pulled out of school when they weren’t expecting to be picked up. The teachers kept walking in to each other’s rooms and talking quietly. Dad was waiting for us in the doorway when we got off the bus. American flags were on everyone’s mailbox for a week. No one told us what had happened for a while.

A few years later I found the middle school and high school kids all watched the live footage...that must have been hard.

Okay enough sad talk. Good things happened this week too!

I had an interview for a babysitting job. The parent’s were looking to find someone to be their regular go-to sitter. A quick - and I mean quick - interview at Starbucks later and I have the job! No dates yet but they said soon.

We also had 3 people come to anime club on Saturday and stay the whole time! Now they just have to do it every week.

The new season of Legend of Korra started on Friday and we’ve added it to the cue in anime club. If you haven’t seen it yet I would recommend it.

Ummm....that’s it? I think so. 

Okay, so it might not seem like a lot, but really 5 classes, 4 clubs, homework, research, Sunday dinner,.... it’s a lot.

A Simple Week

This past week was actually quite simple.

There was no history since I only have it on Mondays and it was Labor Day. Animation basically didn’t happen either. The first lesson of the week was on Monday - again, Labor Day - then on Thursday it was decided that we would go watch the animatic thesis presentations by the seniors. Only one person was where he was suppose to be though. We also had it confirmed that our class will have to do two different thesis’ - one in the fall and the other in the spring of our senior year. I don’t really know why. Something about how the seniors last year said they got board.

Anyway, moving on.

In Design we have been working on flushing out our icons and starting to design stationary headings for our ‘companies.’ Concept has been simple with refining the concepts for our InDesign files.

Finally there was Phycology. We watched a movie. No, not more Phineas and Ferb, the  movie from over the summer, Now You See Me. I saw it in the theaters but I still enjoyed it.

Other than that....I had a meeting with Ed, my department head (yeah I know it rhymes) about graduate school. It has always been the plan to get a masters right after undergrad, the only questions were for what and where.

We talked and made a decision. Since I would love to work at Disney Imagineering he thinks that I should look at Game Design master programs.

I makes sense when you think about it. Imagineering is about designing rides, theme parks, parades ... with game design I would focus on environment design - how to make it interesting and more a person through it with fun interactions. That, coupled with Motion Design, I should be set.

So while I didn’t really have homework all weekend I spent about 8 hours looking up schools for both animation and game design master programs. So far I have a new book with pages on some different colleges. I have location, length of program, tuition, and application process all written down. I have also started organizing a binder to keep print out pages that go more in depth.

Over all I have 8 places I know I’ll be sending applications to next year. I’m not going to let my portfolio hold me back this time.

Not much else happened. I had meetings for 4 different clubs during the week and made Belgian waffles for Sunday Night Dinner with the new waffle iron my Mom bought us at the beginning of the school year.

Honestly, if every weekend is like this I’ll be happy. I could finish all the prep work for grad-school and even work on some personal projects I’ve been planning.

I can only hope.

Labor Day 2013

The last week has flown by really fast. 

All of the classes are actually getting into work, so I have already started doing homework up until 12 midnight. Not crazy late yet...key word: yet.

Brief overview:

Animation: started getting a bit more into Nuke, not that we have actually done anything yet. Still just learning how to put things together.

History: Not really interesting. The best part is that she puts on a film or something after break and once it is done we get to leave. Therefore we normally get out early.

Design: Sometimes it seams like I completely understand, then 2 seconds later I have no clue what Dorian wants.

Concept: Nora is really great with telling us exactly what she wants. This past week we have been learning a rhetoric and how it is used in ads.

Physic: We’re learning about Id, Ego, and Super-Ego so I convinced our teacher to put on an episode of Phineas and Ferb that actually talks about it.

So there are all the classes. I also had my first meeting of Ministry of Magic - no one new showed, first meeting of AIGA - coming up with a bake sale soon, and the second meeting for Anime club - had about 10 new people!

Our department also had their meeting and mixer party. It’s really boring after a few years but you get pizza. 

Labor Day also just happened - summer is now even more over. Our school didn’t have classes so a few friends and I went to see The Butler at the movies. We all really enjoyed it. 

Not much else happened to ‘celebrate.’ Finished up homework and applied for a dozen or so babysitting jobs...we’ll see if anyone replies but I don’t have my hopes up.