I am a little under halfway through Dickens’ Great Expectations, and, as I expected, I am completely falling in love with Dickens’ use of language. I put little placeholders in a few spots a while back: one at the word “Pumblechookian,” one at the insult “dunderheaded king of the noodles,” and one at the sentence, “Mr. Trabb had sliced his hot rolls into three feather beds, and was slipping butter in between the blankets, and covering it up.” I just thought that that was about the coziest, most delicious sentence I’ve ever heard, and it’s only one of at least hundreds of equally wonderful sentences! I often find myself comparing particular writers’ use of words to various sense experiences; reading certain books feels like listening to a piece of music, or going for a walk through enchanting environments. Reading Dickens, I have decided, feels like eating an amazing meal, each chapter more delicious than the next, filling yet leaving you even more excited for the next course.

Yeterday, I took and aced my Early Christian/Byzantine art history test, rented a camera for my Time project, wrote a 6-page script for Thursday, figured out what to write my art history paper about (the liturgical homilies of St. Gregory of Nazianzus) and did a ton of research, wrote up material for the paper, and got much farther in my animation. YEAH! Feels good. Rarely do I get as much done on a Friday as I actually intend to. I hope today will be equally productive, as there is still so much to do!

Goodness me, so much going on here! 

-I animated from a live model for the first time ever today! It was fun, and most of the challenge was just the need to draw quickly (the model held each interval of movement for a minute, so we had to get the figure and lighting and props down in just one minute).

-There’s an animator coming in to do a series of workshops with animation students soon and I am eager to sign up!

-I’m auditioning for a play tomorrow night! I know, what?! For the MassArt New Play Festival which is apparently a thing that exists!

-I’ve been working on a 15x20 sized comic for tomorrow’s Time class and it is consuming my liiife.

-I ate JELLYFISH yesterday! Real honest to goodness jellyfish! Most authentic dim sum I’ve ever had. I pretty much only ate things I’d never tried before, though the jellyfish was the most exciting.

-On Wednesday I can finally officially register myself as an Animation Major! There’s going to be a whole big event for students to learn about various majors and then declare if they wish.

-My animation professor thought my animations were some of the best in the class today, teehee! Which felt really good because I put a lot of time into them outside of class.

-I completed my first script recently, which was about my family’s experience at the Mainstay Motel(hellhellhellhell).

-I’ve gotten 20 MassArt students involved in the Molly Project!

-On Wednesday evening, this company called Cloud Kid is coming to do a presentation for all animation, illustration, and graphic design majors. They’re doing portfolio reviews for juniors and seniors, but underclassmen like myself are welcome to come to see if we’d be interested in an internship there in the future, so I’m going to check it out.

-My kitchen is messier than I ever dreamed possible. It’s been an epic, ever-expanding mess ever since Italian Friday, because promptly after Italian Friday, I started drowning in homework and Sarah got sick. Hopefully we’ll tackle at least some of it tonight but who knows!

-Last night I had a dream that I got a papercut on my eyeball which worstened into this big gash and I haven’t been able to get the gross image or feeling out of my mind all day. Aughuahghghgh

Christopher Hinton - Nibbles (2003) 

We watched a few short films by Chris Hinton in today’s animation class. This was my favorite. We went through a couple of sections of this one frame by frame to realize how he expresses SO much in such a minimal way, and we talked about a few techniques he employs. I love the crazy sketchy style of his work. It’s incredibly energetic. It made me think of my scriptwriting class because one of the things that makes scriptwriting difficult is that you are required to be very minimal; you have to figure out ways to set up situations and interactions so that much is assumed and understood without explicitly being written.

(Source: youtube.com)

Huzzah! Today was a GREAT picker-upper after yesterday’s Day of Disappointments (did I mention that in the second class I went to yesterday, a million waitlisted students showed up and the professor said he couldn’t let in a single one of us?). 

I had my first scriptwriting class! The professor seems good, and there are tons of nice people and nice vibes. The sense I get is that scriptwriting will consist of a good combination of things I already enjoy and new challenges. We started off the class the standard way; getting to know each other and talking about the course requirements and expectations. Then we watched a really good short film whose title was something like “Dispassionate Moments,” which consisted of very brief snippets of random peoples’ lives, narrated by a British man with a soothing voice. The moments captured were both ordinary and incredibly intimate, like a man seeing dust particles and reflecting on how when he was a child his mother told them they were fairies. We talked about the film for a while, and then watched another short film which was more recent. It was part of a series of short films from around the world all relating in one way or another to 9/11 (the film was called “1’09”01 September 11”). Surprisingly, this particular short was a humorous satire and took place in Burkina Faso. After a coffee break, we reconvened in a computer lab to begin learning about the scriptwriting format and looked at some samples. The homework is going to be a combination of scriptwriting and reading and responding to fictional short stories (in regular prose).

After class, I went to meet with an academic adviser to fix my scheduling woes. He was incredibly helpful, and I feel so reassured. I’ve got a lot of professors to email today, and lots of options for classes, so it’s all going to be okay. PHEW!

It feels wonderful to be back at school, attend classes, and not have to freak out as much about my schedule. All good things.

Sorry to brag for a second but I’m too happy to not do it just a tiny bit…

My professor asked me to email her a part of my writing about the Eva Hesse exhibit that I shared in class today (I was the only person who really did a full write-up about the sculptures so my professor asked me to read it aloud; other people mostly did bullet-point notes), so I did, and got a response that was so encouraging and nice! It included the following: “I’m on the bus now appreciating your effort. I hope you got as much out of the experience as we all did! Thank you for raising the bar.”

I’m a bar-raiser! :D

Update: My professor said she almost wants to forward my piece to the curator at the ICA, and thinks I should continue writing about art and maybe eventually even as a job. Also she thinks that my classmates will all enjoy and learn a lot from my writing. Akashdglkasjdhg this is the best day! These emails, plus a cozy thunderstorm, a tidy and cozier-than-ever room, and I spent all afternoon doing my Form Study assignment for next week, and now it’s done. I am a very happy Julia right now.