Warning: what follows is generally a bunch of incoherent rambling while I talk to myself and try to figure out how to make class time, mommy time, wifey time and daycare hours all work together. Feel free to ignore it and move on to the next post.
So here we are again, in the squiggly anticipation time between the tease of advising and actual registration. This is yet another semester where I find myself facing the conflict between what I need to take and what makes for a schedule that works here in the realm of reality.
Here's the short list for the fall: one final science elective (in this case Geology 105: Geology and Man, also known as "rocks for jocks"), Art and the Computer, Drawing III, and Art Since 1945. That's assuming that I take Introduction to Sculpture over the summer.
The thing about any schedule is that my youngest son is still nursing so I need to be available to him, my older two children prefer to breakfast at the daycare on campus (which requires dropping them off by 8:00am) and I have a proven track record of routinely skipping any class that does not immediately follow another. (Once I'm on campus, I'm on campus and need to get it done or I'll leave between and never make it back. I know, I'm horrible.)
So, given those factors consider: Introduction to Sculpture (time intensive and not really something I can work on at home) has one section available in the summer, Monday through Thursday from 12:45pm to 3:30pm. First of all, a three hour studio is not my idea of a rockin' good time. At least, not when the persistent rumor in the department is that the professor lectures for the duration of the class time and leaves you to accomplish the assignments in your own hours. We're not talking a small feat here. We're talking about three sculptures, the finished assembly of which tends to be as large as you are (assuming you're almost six feet tall and one hundred fifty pounds), and are made of various materials including but not limited to: wood, plaster, metal, and chicken wire.
An alternative for the summer would be to take Introduction to Painting, another time intensive studio that also needs to be done in the studio itself. It carries a much better time slot of 8:00am to 10:10am Monday through Friday. Besides, two hours in class and having that class time to actually work sounds much more appealing to me. The drawback is that I would then be forced to sacrifice Drawing III for Sculpture come the fall.
Speaking of the fall, Geology and Art and the Computer play nicely with me by lining up very neatly Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 9:00am to 9:50am and 10:00am to 11:50am, respectively. Art Since 1945 does an excellent job of falling right into the preferred time slot of 8:00am to 9:15am Tuesday and Thursday, but then we encounter a SNAFU when it comes to scheduling Drawing III, the only offering that fits with my other classes is 11:00am to 1:45pm. That gap would kill me. Not enough to get off campus and get any thing done, but too much to just sit around Fletcher with my thumbs up my ass. Sculpture swoops in to the rescue with a 9:30am to 11:45am offering.
Seems like an easy proposition, right? Painting in the summer, Sculpture in the fall since, if you're not a painting or sculpture major, the two are interchangeable. The miserable little bit of that is that I really need to get around to Drawing III and IV before I get so far out of practice that I have no hope of actually completing either of those courses with a grade worth reporting. As it is, it's been so long since I took Drawing II that I'm having problems with my orthographic drawings in Design this semester. It's not a problem grade-wise since the drawings aren't graded, but it is a massive problem when you get into the nuts and bolts of planning some of these three dimensional pieces, especially the wood projects.
Oh well, what's a girl to do? Guess I'll put the kids to bed, have an imaginary glass of wine (sometimes I wish I hadn't decided to breastfeed), and head off to the wood shop for another late night at Fletcher Hall. That place really needs a coffee shop in it.
Labels: class, scheduling
