11 Weeks

Effectively, as of Monday, I have 11 weeks of school left before I graduate. Usually about 8 weeks into a semester I'm totally annoyed and sick to death of the classes and just continue by looking forward to the next semester.

This coming semester: 2 days away and I'm already sick of it.

On Mondays, I have my portfolio review class. This class consists of the B.S. we were handed 6 months ago about how our work isn't good enough and how we're going to improve upon it in order to get permission from the instructor to put it on our demo reel DVD. We've already been given homework for our first class (nice). It consists of a number of questions:
1. Please identify three preferred employers that you are targeting with your portfolio. Describe how the content in your demo reel and printed material will directly interest these employers.
Welp, the 3 companies I'm looking at all do fairly realistic productions, so I'm steering away from fantasy, cartoony, and simplistic art styles and looking more toward realistic or photo-realistic. How I'll convey "photo-realistic" in printed material....
2. Please expand on how the content of your portfolio will demonstrate a personal brand that will distinguish your work from all others?
Why is there a question mark for a sentence beginning with please? My personal brand at school is having things done on time, so chances are my personal brand is that I'll be finished before the rest of these little.... blighters.
3. Explain how you will conduct research on technical and creative aspects for your portfolio work, including what resources you intend to use and how you will present this to the instructor for review.
... What? Well, research is usually done by looking things up, so I imagine I'll use the Internet. Also, I have these neat things called "textbooks" that I picked up so I actually knew what was going on in some of my classes. My technical aspects will come from the textbooks and online tutorials. And, websites have addresses. I'll write them down for you. How will I present these to the instructor? I'm thinking of throwing them at her.
4. What else do you think you need in order to help achieve your goals and complete your portfolio show readiness?
See, that one should have ended with a question mark. What do I need? Clarity. I need to know what you're actually asking me. "Complete your portfolio show readiness" makes no sense to me. Also, the next instructor or Dean who looks at me and says "You're fine" is going to pay dearly. I'm serious. So, some quality feedback would be great, for once. No "You're fine's" and no "that looks like ass." Neither comment actually helps me improve my work.

I don't have class on Tuesday. I've submitted a course challenge. It's a resume-prep class and I have years of experience with that and seeing as how this course isn't even industry-specific for our program --f@#! it. Oh, and the instructor is one of the guys we hated because he was so high on himself. Apparently, there's a 4-hour session where he does nothing but shake your hand. I don't want to touch him, so I'm out.

On Wednesday morning is the first half of my grad project class. WE have 8 hours of lab time a week to complete our project. Although I'm leading the group, I have 3 people working directly under me. One, for sure, has stepped down as he doesn't understand documentation at all (yeah, don't worry --no one documents anything in the real world). Another may have stepped down. He can't seem to make up his mind. He's told some he's done, but he's asked me what his status is.... putz. The third one is staying on, fortunately. So, I've stepped up and asked 2 of the more "with it" people to fill the seemingly empty roles. One punk, who's never seen the real world before, has bitched and whined for weeks about things and now is bitching about me selecting people for positions. As far as he's concerned, it should be a team decision. Ah yes, just like it is with any company. I always loved picking my boss. The second part of this project falls on Friday afternoons. By next Friday, I may be responsible for the execution of one team member. Maybe two.

On Thursdays, I have another 3D modeling course, unfortunately with the guy we had 2 semesters ago and barely taught us anything because he was too busy taunting the ESL students and ridiculing 'Loser-boy' because he just doesn't get it. The instructor still passed him, of course, so there's a 50-50 chance he'll be in my class again. If that's the case, I'll be switching blocks post-haste. The instructor is an annoying pain in the ass and I don't see me actually getting anything out of that class.

On Friday mornings, we've been promised a drop-in workshop to help us get our 3D work up to a proper level. Depending on who's there to "help" us, these may or may not be helpful.

So, there you go. Absolutely nothing to look forward to over the next 11 weeks.

Except leaving the damn place... in eleven weeks.