What This Semester Taught Me

There are some experiences in life that shape who we are. There are some that hurt us, some that make us wish it could never end, and others that make us question our existence entirely. But through all of it, we grow stronger. That's what college has mainly taught me. Lectures and art projects are what I'm paying for, but it's the transition into adulthood that is the net result.
This year has been a mix of me trying to figure out who I am, while also figuring out relationships in my life. In psychology we learned about this pyramid of personal growth. As a teenager, we try and figure out our identity, and in our young adulthood, we figure out relationships, both romantic and platonic. Me trying to figure out both has been a journey in itself. I am addicted to love. Being near someone, sharing intimacy, it's something I've never truly experienced before coming here. That can lead to a lot of unhealthy decisions. Going on a 3am Grindr hookup after a night of being sad about your last relationship isn't smart. The difference between intimacy and love is something my brain is still having trouble understanding. I get attached quickly, and when those experiences end badly, I feel that the only person to blame is myself. It's worse when you're roommate and best friend is a demisexual (a person who find sexual attraction only after building an emotional connection), because it makes my problems feel like they are inborn. Liking sex isn't a bad thing, but when you're trying to figure out what a real relationship is like, it's not a good idea to hookup with so many guys. Grindr isn't the place to find a boyfriend. I end up feeling like I'm not good enough for anyone because most guys I meet aren't looking for anything serious. It has made me more self conscious of my body and my personality. I've learned to stop blaming everything on myself. Boys, especially my age, aren't the best pool of people to look for a relationship, and I realize that I need let myself mature, and let everyone around me mature, because everyone is trying to figure this out, and once we get past this stage, relationships can be stronger and healthier. I learned that there are people in my life that I love and I don't need to be looking for happiness everywhere else when it's right in front of me.
I've never measured enough when I draw, but this piece taught me how to do that effectively. I can whip out stuff a lot more easily and more accurately when I take a pencil and figure out where everything is. Through all of the technical training I still try to stay true to my style and always be making art. The eraser marks in the hand are something that bother me, as does my execution of the watch. But that's all part of learning. Getting comfortable with the materials is a whole different aspect of drawing. I can see things, now I need to work on making what I put down on paper more in line with what my eyes see. I like to think this project summed up my first semester. It represents everything I've learned, while staying true to who I am, and my facial expression sums up how learning isn't always easy. I am a better artist, I am a stronger person, and I am ready to continue this great exploration and continue to grow. I don't know everything, I've always been open to that about my art, but not about myself, and being here has taught me that being open to emotional growth is just as important as intellectual growth.

Race and Bernie Sanders

Let me start off by saying that I am vigorously in support of Bernie Sanders. For people who don't know who he is, spend half an hour on the internet and you'll find out soon enough. There isn't any candidate that is more in line with my own views and I have never seen a politician more honest than Bernie Sanders. He is a good man, there is no disputing that. But there does seem to be a dispute brewing with Bernie Sanders and non-white America, and this week, escalated when protesters from the Black Lives Matter movement disrupted an event in Seattle where Sanders was set to speak. 

I see Sanders as a hero. But I also feel an enormous amount of sympathy for the Black community because for generations their problems have been pushed off, and they have every right and should be protesting and organizing to secure their rights. So when I heard what happened in Seattle I didn't know what side to be on. I think the saddest part of this whole thing is that the protesters don't realize how Bernie's plan for our country would help minority communities more than Obama did in his almost seven years in office. 

Martin Luther King Jr. was radically liberal for his time. People like to forget this fact because he is seen as an admired historical figure by all, and his views never aligned with mainstream America until recently. Aside from social equality, King saw that the best way to help his community was by bringing more economic opportunity. Equality is more than making laws securing that children can go to the same school. It's about creating a system that lets everyone, regardless of race, have opportunities to succeed. It's giving African-Americans the money to afford decent housing, to have good schools, and to pay for college. Police brutality, in many ways, stems from the same systematic and cultural policies that keep money and opportunity out of minority communities. Laws can be written to ensure that police are fair, but that doesn't end the years of economic deprivation that has plagued communities of color for over a century. Putting cameras on police officers doesn't solve racism. Ending the war on drugs, demilitarizing the police, providing affordable housing and good schools, having a media that represents the whole country, not just the white liberal elite, that's how start. There is no candidate running for president that understands this more the Bernie Sanders. I understand the frustration that Black communities in this country have, but understand that Bernie Sanders is a white liberal in Vermont. He is an honest man, and he listens when you talk to him. Don't attack Bernie, debate Bernie. Sanders is consistently asking for debates and he has been very vocal with the public. The Black Lives Matter movement needs to realize that they need to support Bernie as much as they can, because there isn't another candidate who will help them more. I feel the same frustration with Sanders when it comes to immigration. He has been very quite about that topic, and he needs to address that more. As the son of two immigrants, I know this country needs to rethink how we deal with that system, but I also know that Latino communities across this country could benefit immensely from Sanders' economic ideas. People die trying to get to this country. They are refuges escaping the violence and poverty of their homes, and we need to make a system that can incorporate those people to our great country. Sanders is the divide of liberals in this country. He is a white man who is trying to be a man of the people. He is a man of the people, but needs to understand that the people are diverse and different communities have different issues. That being said, I still believe Bernie is the candidate who will do the most for minority communities if elected president. Even candidates like Rubio and Cruz would do far less for the Latino communities of this country because they answer to the billionaires and their party more than the people. 

Trust in Bernie, everyone. I do.  

Why (Some) White People Are Scared

The United States has, on multiple occasions, gone through major shifts in its demography. But through most of that shifting, the ethnic groups never strayed too far from the English center it was founded on. German, Irish, Italian are a common part of not only the white American culture, but also its DNA. A white American with Irish heritage isn't treated much differently than a white American with German heritage, and their experience and culture in this country is shared. Though these people were once persecuted, they exist with all the same ethnic benefits that the previous English class once boasted. In the case of Blacks though, they were never assimilated into that ruling class because of the generations of slavery, persecution, discrimination, and the obvious difference in skin color. Over the past thirty years, the black population hasn't shifted very much, never straying too far from 15% of Americans.

But now, the United States is going through a different change, one that is unparalleled in its scope and the reason why the white American experience is in danger. White America has been able to be the ruling class ever since the founding of the country, and has been able to keep minorities like Blacks, Latinos, and Asian Americans from experiencing the type of growth and acceptance that the European migrations boasted. But, in viewing the demographic changes that have occurred in the hispanic population of the country, and the expected growth, white Americans are, for the first time ever, faced with the integration of a non-European group entering that ruling class. While there are many hispanics with European ancestry, many still hold strong ties with their Native Latin American ethnicity. This year, a quarter of all children born in the United States were Hispanic. One out of every four children are Latino and the population of non-hispanic white children has gone from 74% in 1980 to 51% in 2015 according to the POP3 RACE AND HISPANIC ORIGIN COMPOSITION. Even though there is much variation of Hispanic Americans, as many Hispanics are able to assimilate almost totally into white America because their physical features and upbringing, Latino culture hasn't left our group. Many of us are fluent in Spanish and have close relations with our families in Latin America. As our population grows in this super connected world, we could soon see the United States becoming a part of Latin America, especially as we embrace Latino culture.

The fear is understandable. When I hear some Fox News pundit or misinformed patriot talking about closing the border, saying immigrants must learn English to be citizens, knocking down Affirmative Action, or even blatant racism, I understand it. Change is hard to deal with. But, take this into consideration; Europeans came to this continent and changed everything. There was genocide of the Native peoples of the Americas that lasted generations and is overlooked and still denied by many people. So, you, white America, are worried about a cultural change to your home? You fear that an external force will come in and make you learn a new language and maybe add a few more Mexican restaurants to your town? About 100 million Native people died so you could call this your home. You yourself are not responsible for that, but understand that the home and culture you are trying to protect is a result of relocating and killing millions of people. Conservatism in this country makes little sense to me. To conserve something like "racial purity" or "family values" or even the Constitution in a country that forced the largest change in North America is confusing to me. I get your fear, white America, I do, but please, remember the reason why you are the majority.  

Comfort

My artistic career has been a journey of pushing every boundary I have. It's allowed me to explore parts of myself that I wouldn't have even thought to go, but recently I realized that there is still a huge boundary that I haven't really touched. Style. It's a weird word to me because it assumes that art is categorized into these set things when in my mind, I just draw what I like. I have used style as a crutch ever since I started drawing. My first pieces where poor copies of expressionist art, and I used the guise of that style to pardon my lack of drawing skills. Ever since I gained confidence in my abilities, I assumed that I had no crutches anymore, that my work could be whatever I wanted it to be and the fact that it all fell into this style that can easily be identified as me didn't bother me. But recently I realized that I was using the same crutch now that I did before. There are some things that I don't even touch in art. And the reason is because I fear what the outcome would be because I don't have experience with that thing.

There are three pieces that I have made in the past month that have tried to challenge this uncomfortable feeling I have towards certain things in art.

The first is a self-portrait I made. Color is something I fear because I always feel like I get it wrong. I prefer to do everything in black and white because it reduces the number of things I need to think about. I would use color to accent the pieces, but most of my work has been just charcoal on paper. I visited the Frida Kahlo exhibit at the New York Botanical Gardens and I left inspired. Frida Kahlo is one of my idols and I had started an oil painting trying to mimic her style a while ago. I hated this piece so much I didn't touch it for weeks. Kahlo's use of color is fantastic, so I tried to copy that. Now, I feel a lot more confident in color. I can use it to my advantage rather than hide from it and hope I magically get better without practice.

The next piece is this landscape I've been doing for quest. I am comfortable only when the image is close up. I would normally freak out if I had to this, but I tried hard to make it what I wanted it to be. This is one of the few pieces I have ever worked on that has no people in it. I love portraits more than anything but I don't want to not be able to do anything else. This is great practice for doing something I'm not comfortable with because I should know how to do landscapes, even if I don't like them because in a situation like quest, I'd have to. I used to not be comfortable with acrylic paint, but after a year of working in the art room, where my painting options are either that or watercolor, I got better at using it because I was using it so often. I find that the materials that I use often determines how the piece is going to look and I don't always like that. Acrylic is good because you can layer it quickly. The water I did was only possible because it dried quick. It's a different mindset for every medium you use and I have only recently become aware of that. I can't approach acrylic like oil just like I can't approach oil like charcoal.

This last piece is one I did today. I was home and I wanted to crank something out and I wasn't even considering going in the direction that I did. I was sketching out the basic design in pencil, and for some reason, instead of picking up charcoal like I would normally do, I got a fine point sharpie. It is one of the things I dread most. It's so permanent and I'm not that type of artist. I put down something and I go over it a hundred times. It's why I have grown to like acrylic paint so much. I can just keep layering it, making slight changes, and never have to worry about fucking up something because I can always go over it with white paint. But this piece was the opposite of everything I do. It's a single line that defines areas and it's very cartoony.. I love it because it shows that I am capable of making work outside of what I conventionally make. I used oil pastels to color it in and I felt like I was in elementary school again, making sure to be very exact with my coloring because if I drew outside the lines, the whole piece would be ruined.

Decisions

So today I got two emails. Both were acceptance letters, the first from Pratt, which I got in the middle of my Man's Inhumanity to Man class and just now, I checked my email again and Syracuse University sent me an acceptance email. So now I am in a point where I loved to be in, but also where I hate to be. Rochester Institute of Technology is my favorite school. I've spent hours finding out everything I can about all these schools, and RIT is my favorite because it has everything I want in a school, and nothing I don't want. I hate to be in this position because now I actually have to consider these other schools. Decision is hard and if I was denied by these schools my choice would have been so much easier. Each school is generally the same if we want to consider ranking of my program. There are so many places that rank schools and these three are all very good schools for Industrial Design.
I applied to other schools, but I wouldn't want to go to those. Even if I get into Carnegie Mellon or RISD, I do not like their philosophy on education. Schools like those are elitist, and even though none of these schools are cheap, I don't want to go to a school that invests in rich students to become successful. And education wise, I am sure that Carnegie Mellon isn't extraordinarily better than Syracuse. In fact, from what I've seen through my own research, RIT is probably going to give me the best education because it's one of the only schools where the focus is diverse and includes a lot more math and science classes, which even though I probably won't enjoy, will be better for me.
Pratt was my original favorite school. I loved being in Brooklyn because being a student in NYC felt right for me, but after spending a lot of time thinking about it, I decided that Pratt was probably not going to be good for me. I visited the school and spent time with my friend Michelle Marin, and she gave me an unofficial tour of the campus. It's a great looking school, tiny, but pretty, but after seeing the people there, I didn't feel comfortable. I don't want to be surrounded by artists. I also don't want to be that close to home. If my parents can get to me within ten minutes from where they work, which is the case with where my father works, I don't want to be there. I don't want everyone at my school to be like me, which sounds weird to say, but it's true. It's the same reason I didn't want to go to Purchase. Everyone there is the weird kid in high school, and I'm not about that.
That's why I turned my attention to Syracuse. I loved its size and it's Industrial Design program was great because it was separate from the rest of the art program. I would be with other ID kids, and be in a campus where there were a lot of things happening, and I loved that. But the school has a big Greek community. It's the number one party school in the country, which really doesn't bother me, but it's something to keep in mind. Location wise, it's great. It's far, and it's cold. I like the cold and I like being far.
RIT had been an option longer than any school I applied to. It had my program and I applied there almost forgetting that I had. I lumped it together with Syracuse because they're both upstate and they both have orange as a school color. But after I started to do more research into it, I realized that it was a great fit for me. It's a school for nerds. The way I see it is that it just like a normal run-of-the-mill university, but with a lot more nerdy kids. And that has a lot of advantages for me. As an ID student, it means being in an environment where design is taken in as a technology tool rather than an extension of art. It means that I will be working with engineers and computer science majors and I would have the best equipment. I could chill with artists and work with geeks. I feel that RIT is where I can excel at most.
Industrial designers are judged on their portfolio. That's how you get jobs and success. So, the school I go to, even though it has importance, isn't as important as how good I get at what I want to do. RIT, i feel, is going to leave me with a better portfolio when I graduate, and that's the main reason I want to go there.

RIT

So I just got my acceptance letter to RIT today. This has probably been one of the most relieving things to happen to me in a long time. This was the first school that got back to me that I submitted a portfolio to and it is also one of my favorite schools that I applied to. RIT is making huge advances in their design programs to try and merge design and technology which is really where I want to be. They recently opened a new building called the Vignelli Design Center, and the Vignellis are my biggest design idols. Having their name attached to the school makes me want to study there even more.
Deciding what school to go to is going to be tough, but I am starting to think that RIT is where I might get the best education for industrial design because the focus of the school isn't on art. Everyone there is sort of working towards furthering the world technologically. Being surrounded by video game designers and computer science majors is a totally different experience than being surrounded by only artists.  
When I went to the portfolio day at Purchase College and showed my work to the RIT people, they were the most critical, so I was actually a bit surprised that it was the first school to get back to me. It's a huge confidence booster because now my portfolio feels justified because a school has accepted it. I wasn't expecting to get any notification from RIT until March, because that is when they said they'd get back. I am still waiting on other schools, but right now, RIT is one of my favorites. What makes it great is the focus the school has on computers and technology. The feeling I get from schools like Pratt and Parsons is that design is this extension of art. I was watching a video of the President of RIT talking about the school and the way he addressed design was through a more progressive view. He saw it as a way to enhance technology, not as a spin-off of art.

Colleges

So I've started to hear back from a couple of schools. All the CUNY schools have been sending me stuff, but i don't know if i got into Macaulay Honors until March. New Paltz got back to me today, and I was thinking about my future a bit more. The reason why I applied to New Paltz and Macaulay Honors was because I was scared that maybe I didn't want to study what I had originally planned to in the beginning of the year, industrial design. The thing is, i still do, but I also have found a passion for so many other things. What I am scared of now is being limited because I am in a specialized program. At an art school, most of my curriculum is already pre-decided, and I don't know if I like that. There are still so many things I want to learn, and I am actually starting to consider going to New Paltz because I wouldn't have to be declared until a while into my college career. I could take the computer science classes I've been dying to, I could finally get the start on German I need and I could continue getting fluent in French. I could take art classes too, and feel more in control of what my future might be.
It's hard because I didn't think that I'd ever get to this point. I hadn't even considered that the feeling to not go to art school would be as strong as it is. I want to spend a year drawing and designing, but not if that means spending a year not being allowed to study everything else I want to learn. Going into art school would narrow my options, but not going wouldn't allow me those options that I also want. I can't get a linguistics degree from Pratt just as I can't get an industrial design degree from New Paltz. Also, economically, going to art school is statistically not as wise of an investment. It costs more and the jobs you get after aren't any better. Economics and finance have become a huge part of my life, and I have even thought about minoring in it if I had the option.
Also, I've been thinking about the people I will meet. Artists are interesting and fun people, but they offer a narrow perspective on many things. I love linguists because their lives are focused on learning the perspective of other's through their language. Computer Science guys also have a totally different view on the world than artists. I don't want where I go to school to limit the types of people I will interact with. I want to have it all, and that's not always possible. I have a decision to make, and I don't have to make it now, but I will soon, and I need to think about it more.
Also, a side note, the reason I haven't been blogging much in the past couple months is because I started journaling. I found that it's a much better place to organize my thoughts because I don't have any filters. I can write whatever I want and on a blog I can't because it is public. I think everyone should keep a personal journal. All of the issues I'm going through are recorded and I can look back and think about what I should do.

Language

For the past few years of my life I have taken up a serious fascination with language. After learning French my mind totally opened up to a different way of thinking and it's a feeling that is indescribable. I've come to the point now where I realize that language is something that I am going to pursue for the rest of my life. I'm not just going to wake up one morning and decide that I don't want to speak French or Spanish. And the thought that I need to be forever taking classes to keep up with the languages is also crazy because these languages have become part of my daily life.

I feel a great stress lifted off of my shoulders now that I have applied to college. So I've decided that I would embark on a new goal for myself. It's not really a new goal as much as it is embracing the goals I had already set out. Language is going to be my life for the rest of my high school career. I have dreamed about being a polyglot since I was in middle school, and now that I am only a language away from being one, I decided to learn a new language. Actually, I've decided to learn two. Dutch and German are beautiful languages. They are perfectly in sync with what I have already been learning, and the similarities between the two, and with english, is incredible. I don't expect to become fluent in these languages between now and the end of the school year, but I hope to create a strong base to work and live off of after. French showed me how learning language is about personal dedication and fun. Spanish taught me how living the language works so much better than memorizing vocabulary. Spanish is easy for me because I don't have to put much effort in practicing it because my family is always speaking it. French is all about me putting myself in situations where I have to use it. Yesterday I was texting a family friend in Switzerland about my plans to travel to Europe this summer. Everyday I listen to hours of French music just because that is what is on my playlists. I even talk to customers at The Bakery, where i work, in Spanish just so that I can practice.

What does language have to do with art? In my mind, art is another language that people can understand. We use art to communicate what language cannot. Art exists because language in itself is flawed. If I say, "Hi my name is Julian" all you can get from that is my name. If I showed you one of my self portraits or a short story I wrote about myself, you are able to understand who I am through that work. There is no phrase in any language that can do that like art.

My Job and Life

Having a job has taught me so much. I'm really understanding adulthood, budging, business, and responsibility in general. A year ago, I never thought that I'd have a job, and now that I do, it's nothing like I expected. 

Having money is the best part. It's something I really can't explain because it's so awesome. At least for me it is. I hate having to ask my parents for anything, and now, I really don't have to. If I need something, I can go and buy it. Two months ago when I bought a subscription to Spotify and I was terrified because I thought that my parents would get mad for me not consulting them. They didn't because it's my money. I choose that it's something I want to invest in because I hate having to buy and download all my music. But, it's more than small purchases like Spotify, I also have made pretty big purchases, and it has been my decision. This February, I'm going to Quebec with the French class. I saved up for four months and got enough to pay for myself. There is something so gratifying about being able to do that. No one could tell me that the trip was too expensive because I was paying for it. And, this summer, I'm going backpacking across Europe, and I'm saving all my money for that too. I can do the things I want to because I have the money for it. And I calculate how much I am allowed to spend out of what I make to still have enough. Taking economics now, during the first semester, has really helped with that. I realized that I have a lot of money, and spending it on stupid things just doesn't make sense. I can almost anything I want, but to have the things and experiences I really want, I need to be smart.

The shitty part is that I work a lot. Especially during the time I have off. Vacations aren't vacations because I have to work. Weekends aren't any better than schools days when I have an eight hour shift. My social life has dwindled, and my ability to produce art has also taken a hit. I love having a job, but I have having to go. It brings structure to my life, but being creative becomes difficult when I have to adhere to a schedule. That's where my thoughts bring me to the future. Having a job I can't stand being in isn't an option. I need a career that is as flexible as I am. 

I recently saw a documentary on the life and careers of Lella and Massimo Vignelli, and I envy them so much. They had the life I dream of. Their work was never boring or meaningless, it was never for a paycheck or stability. They did what they did because they loved design. I want a career where I can do what they did; getting paid to make something functional and beautiful. They have become my new idols in a way. Their foreign to the United States, which I admire because they're bilingual, and they're so intelligent. Listening to them talk is like having your mind blown every moment. They both died this year, and it's a shame that I'm just now discovering who my idols are right after they've died.

I think my life can be wonderful. Knowing how to spend my money and having a job that is fulfilling is all I need to be content. 

Beginnings

In my opinion, starting projects are normally the easiest part of the process. I never had a problem starting a project, and for me, I see problems seeing those projects through. I don't fear beginning something because when you first start something, you have nothing to ruin, but once you continue a project you have put a lot of effort into, it becomes difficult to make changes and finish it because of the fear of messing it up. I do, like most humans, have a level of procastination that I have to deal with. I put off starting the things I'm uncertain about because I fear getting myself into a situation where I have to deal with failure. I don't see this problem very much in my artwork because, but rather in my school work. I think that working on a piece of art allows for easy beginnings because of a relatively low level of preparation involved. Art is whatever you want it to be, so you can manage the fear far easier because the requirements are set by yourself. Writing a paper on a topic I know nothing about is scarier than starting a painting of a horse. I've never studied drawing horses, so after my first couple of sketches, I could realize that it'd be better in my ability to just draw it's head. With school work, you're expected to finish it within the parameters of what will get you a good grade, which is why I put off starting school projects.

Overall, beginning isn't a big fear of mine. I have started far more things than I've finished. If I am working and I can't finish a piece because I'm not comfortable with where it's going, I just stop working on it. That mentality allows me to continue to work without a fear of starting because I know that most of what I start won't be a fully realized piece. The fear of starting goes away when you know that most of what you're making isn't going to be present as a finished piece. 

I never push myself too far in regards to my art. I never set myself up for something that I don't think I can realistically do. This is especially evident in when I write plays and movie scripts. If I had it so that I was setting myself up to have to do very difficult things in movies, then starting would be much more scarier. The elevator movies we had to make are a great example. I wasn't thinking of a cool idea as much as I was thinking of a plausible idea. I wanted to make something that could be turned out quickly and easily. I knew that it'd be hard to cast boys so I wrote the script to have two girls, and I made it so that nearly anyone could have played the parts. The shots were all easy and could be changed quickly if they didn't work. Because of that, starting filming on Friday wasn't a problem for me at all because I knew that I could get it done. 

Fear

I've encountered my fair share of fear in my artistic process. Fear is something that every artist has to deal with because as much as it is a block for creating work, fear makes us human. One of the biggest things I've noticed about fear and work is that there is a lot more fear when your work is supposed to mean something, or be for something. When I first started my 365, there really wasn't much fear at all. I wasn't expecting to create work for anything. No one could judge my art poorly because I was literally just starting, and I wasn't working anyone expect myself. As much as I continue to try and do that, it gets significantly harder the more serious I take my work. I'm scared about people thinking I'm not good enough. The excuse that I'm new at all of this isn't true anymore, so every piece I make, I'm conscious of how people might view it. I can say that truthfully, this hasn't helped my process as much. Gone are the days when I can draw faces from pictures on the internet for hours. That's "plagiarism" according to colleges and the AP. That was my go to process. Coming up with sketches and trying to make the pieces exciting and new, that's what's scary. I liked the simplicity of what it used to be. Experimenting without judgement or consequence. I don't have a problem producing work, but I can say that I would be producing much more if I didn't have so much fear.
In regards to my tent project, a big block in that is fear. I could push myself to try and get it done, but I have almost no idea what to do with it. I've never done anything like it before, so I'm scared that I'd fail. There is research I'd have to do, and materials I'd have to gather, and then the assembly. I've come to a point where I know what I want to do, I know what I want it to look like, but I have no idea how to physically make it. Making work I'm comfortable with eliminates the need to fear it. I know how to draw a face, so doing that instead is normally what ends up happening when I work on it.
One of the best ways to work through fear, from my experience, is to work a lot on a the thing you're scared of, in tiny practices so that you can go through the failure quickly without worrying about it having consequences. Quick figure drawings are a great example. A bad thirty second gesture drawing means almost nothing because your investment was so tiny, but if you do a lot of them, then drawing bodies becomes easy and comfortable.

Artistically, I have been having problems lately. Really for the entire school year I've been having problems with the work I'm making. I just hate some of what I'm making. I literally look at it, and dread having to touch it. I feel that everything I'm making now is so far from what I want it to be. It feels heavy and just opposite of the way that I work. I haven't been able to just draw in a long time. Everything I do has that connotation that it needs to be a finished product, rather than sketches or quick pieces. I have problems with composition, and that's very apparent when I'm trying to set a up a painting. The work that I make feels like executing out a plan. I have blueprints and I work to make that blueprint a reality. I much rather prefer making that blueprint. When I start projects on sketch paper, I love it. I make it so that it works with graphite or charcoal, and I find it difficult to transfer those pieces to larger paintings. The spontaneity of painting that I was so accustomed to feels like it's gone. I wish I could take everything I know now, and put that into my mind two years ago. I could do so much more with that time. And by having a larger body of work and more experience, what I have to go through now would feel a lot less intense.
I feel like I'm putting off making the art I want until after college application are due because I feel that what I want to do isn't what colleges want to see. It's depressing, and I shouldn't think that way, but it's hard to think any other way sometimes. After applications I'm going to dive into technique again. I need practice with basics and get away from my goal being finished pieces. I want to paint and draw more of the things that give me difficulty, rather than try and avoid those things like how I do it in my current pieces.
I feel that I'm forcing myself into a block, but it'll only last another month, so that's not unbearable.  I want to get back to focusing on myself next year. My apps are due January 1st, so a lot of what I'm thinking about, fits right into the idea of a new years resolution. I want to start to get myself happy again next year so that I can accomplish more. I feel that technically, I haven't grow in a while, and that bothers me because I know that I could be doing much more.

In addition, I wanted to reflect a little on my first paid job. I feel sometimes that it takes over my life, even though it doesn't take over most of my time. Like for example, I don't like to change before I get to work because it takes too long and I don't want to have to carry around more clothes in my already heavy bag, so most of my style is variations on my work uniform. Also, sometimes I feel like I'm on call. At least once a week, someone from the bakery will call me and ask me to cover for someone or work an extra day. I say no and then all of a sudden I'm unreliable. The truth is that I don't care very much about that bakery or what happens to it, but I am expected to care. I don't want my job in the future to do that to me. If I truly care about what I'm doing then that'd be great, but this automatic expectation that my boss has for her employees is that everyone is willing to do anything for the bakery. I don't want to invest in this. I do the job I'm paid to do. I don't want to do any extra because I don't care enough. I'm a fucking artist and I'm getting pressured to dip cookies in chocolate like it's the end of the world. That's not worth my stress. The only thing that keeps me wanting to come back is that I know that by saving all my money, I can have enough to travel. I plan to go to Europe this summer and explore. I don't know exactly where I'm going, but that's part of the adventure. I surrender a part of my freedom so that I can experience a better different freedom later down the road. It's poetic and works like a mantra on those days when everything feels like shit. It's Thanksgiving this week, and there goes what ever vacation I might have had. I've never had to work on a serious holiday before like Thanksgiving, so the feeling is weird. I wish that I could be able to juggle the job like a hobby, but lately it feels like a defining factor of who I am.

Reflecting on this Film

It's done.

To say we didn't run into problems with filming would be a lie. To say we fucked the whole thing up would also be a lie. I don't want to lie in this blog post, so I'll say the truth; we didn't focus enough when we should of. Really it's my fault, since I signed up to be the leader of the project.

The first two days of filming went really smoothly. We had a schedule and we knew exactly what we were doing. I think that's where we ran into problems later.

What I liked:
Vika's house is a perfect place to film. It's has so many parts and angles that we made her one space feel like three separate houses. It fits the film tonally and gave the film personality. I also really liked Jzabelle's acting. It was surprising how good she was from having little experience. The camera doesn't love a lot of people, but it loves Jzabelle. I tell her to do act bigger and she actually does it. She does her best work when she's comfortable and I think she loved all the parts she had in the movie. She had to be distinctively different with each of her appearances to really justify having her play all the smaller parts. I was talking to her about how she should go about doing her police officer part, and she really bought into it. I used a trick I had learned a couple years ago in STAC to get people to act for the camera, I told to practice the movements and lines so I could see how it looked on the camera without actually filming it, but I would be filming it. It worked. But it didn't need to, because she did great without it in the next shot too. Really everyone's acting was pretty good, apart from mine. I had a problem with it, but by the time I was editing, I decided to let it go. I would normally take many shots so that I could get the acting totally right, but when I'm not filming, I don't know if what I had just done was okay or not. I should have looked back after every take to see if I was good or not, but I didn't, and now I know that I should. I had never really been in a group where I was the most experienced filmmaker, so if I ever needed to play a part in other films, I could rely that everyone else would note my acting, like in Shiana's film last year, I was constantly having to redo everything because Shiana was extremely picky, which was a trait I tried to reflect in this film, but even here I should have done more.

What I didn't:
After editing the first bit of what we had filmed on the first day, I came back and realized that there was a plot hole in my script. I had it that Vika and Grace went straight from the hospital to the sperm daddy's house. When they leave the hospital, and are in the car, you do not know where they are going. This problem is solved within a couple of seconds because of a line Vika has that explains why they're there and who my character was. I tried to fix it, but I didn't write anything to fill that gap, I just asked Vika and Grace to improvise, which I found out was a mistake. We spent a good half an hour trying to do that, and almost everything we got to fix the plot hole was useless because it either looked bad, or the fix would have changed more than that specific scene, and I didn't want to go and refilm the hospital scene because I had edited it already and I realized that adding any more dialog would have ruined the fast paced feeling that the scene needed. The other problem was the last scene. I wrote a scene that was way too out there. It would have taken another day entirely to film that one part, and the chances of it being confusing were extremely high. Especially because it takes place in Vika's tiny bathroom, where not only is it hard to get a good angle, but also because I had to make sure that we never actually saw the baby in the bathtub, because it wasn't actually there because we don't have a baby, real or fake, that we can get wet. Also, we had to film that entire sequence in 25 minutes because we were running out of time and I couldn't stay after even for a second. If there was one thing I could fix, it would have been that. We spent far too much time fooling around that day, because we didn't have much to film, and we had started late because we were waiting for Emily to finish her musical preview thing.

Overall, I like the film. It's funny and it was fun to make. You feel more comfortable when you're making something that's supposed to be ridiculous. Buddy films are just that normally, two people going on an adventure doing silly things, and that's exactly what it feels like.

Recently I purchased a standing mirror, because Egon Schiele had one and I thought that it would be a good investment. Honestly, it was. I've realized recently that there are different moods to when I create art, and I make different products in those different moods. Whenever I am in Ganes' class, and in most cases drawing from imagination, I am not focused, and the work I make is shows that. Because these pieces are worked on for for weeks, but only for about half and hour a day, they seem all over the place, and there is a lot more detail on the mindless work that I hate. Like for a piece I'm working on now,  I am using reflective paper and attaching it to my piece to look like a broken mirror. It's work I would never do at home, and it's very time consuming. The feeling I get with the mirror is very different. I start something and then I have to finish it. My mind goes to a place that it doesn't in a classroom, and the work I make, I like more. Really, I don't like working anyplace besides my room. I need a certain environment to get that feeling that creates work I like. And I need time. Just because I have an hour of free time, doesn't mean I can just spent it drawing. I realize that I don't start actually getting good, and getting that feeling I like unless I've been working for at least an hour or two. It's complicated to explain, but it's like a spectrum. I can only create a certain type of work at the beginning of my drawing, and only after that can I really get focused and do the work I like.
I've been working a lot on my portfolio lately. I hate all the bullshit besides that. There is so much I have to do besides my art to go to school which really doesn't make sense to me. I wish I could run away and work on art for a month without anyone bothering me. There are things I want to learn but it always feels like there is something in my way that is preventing me from learning those things. What's the point of being a student if you have that problem. My job is to learn, but right now, it feels like my job is to fill out forms and sit through useless classes. Even this year, I spent so much time trying to create a perfect schedule, but I still find the same problems. I'm not learning French and Spanish at the speed I want to, art class is basically a lunch period without food, and english, economics and health are things to fill time. It doesn't feel like I'm learning anything, and that makes me angry. That's why I'm excited for college. No matter where I end up going, all the schools I'm applying to have foundation years. Spending a year just drawing and designing is what I long for. My average day is waking up at six, sit through classes all day, spend four hours a work, and then come home and do my homework for two hours. I can't learn if my life feels like a wheel turing the same way everyday. Weekends save me. I can paint and draw, while I listen to french and spanish music and that teaches me more than everything else I do.

Tent Project

Tents are confusing. Don't deny it, because you know they are. Why? That's the question the drives me into this project. Why does a tent need to be confusing? You should be able set it up and be chilling in your habitation within ten minutes.

So I started thinking. When I was little, I had a tent that would bend up and fit into a bag. It required no set up and the most difficult part of the process was putting the tent away. Starting from that point, it can become difficult to expand the idea. The tent itself wasn't sturdy. The poles that would hold it up were far to weak to withstand a night outdoors, so I was stuck. I don't know much about materials, in fact, figuring out what materials to use is still something that I find problems with now. That was the first block I had, so I decided to change the approach that I had. I was still looking at a tent through the old fashion idea of what a tent is. I took a step back and started to approach this like a designer. 

First I looked at what would be the easiest way to make a shelter. Legos. Legos inspired this whole project because they're easy. A three year old child can create a house out of legos. I translated that into the image of a tent and ended up with three boards that clicked together and created a pyramid. Immediately I encountered problems. Large boards aren't portable and even with conservative material usage, they'd be heavy. But that didn't stop me. The idea of pieces that just clicked together would work. So then I took a look at actual tents again. Fabric and poles are what normal tents are made out of, so I found my solution there. Rather than build a tent, the fabric and poles would build the triangular boards, which would then be assembled into a tent. Using the same materials as a normal tent meant that you had the same ease of portability. The best thing about modern-day tents is their portability, so my tent would have that same advantage in addition to it's ease of assembly. 

I spent a variety of days playing around with proportions with paper.

And on google sketchup 

Now I've reached the most difficult part so far of the project, and that's physically creating it. 

Connection is the hardest part. How will the fabric connect to the poles? How will the boards that are made connect with each other? These are the questions that I'm facing now.

In addition, I'm using other design idea I've been reading about to finish this project. For example, color coded poles. Using similar colors to signify what goes together means that the confusion of what pole is used for what goes away, and many of the poles are interchangeable because two of the three walls are the exactly the same. 

What is Industrial Design?

Within the next few weeks I'm going to be blogging a lot about Industrial Design, so I thought that I'd introduce the ideas and my views in a blog post before I get right into what I'm working on.

At the beginning of the school year I got two books. Actually one book and one was given to me; Vision In Motion and The Design of Everyday Things. Industrial Design feels new, even though it's been around for a while. Basically, all the modern ideas of design came with the industrial revolution. Before then there was no way to get your product to an entire population of people, so there was no need for people to collect and think about how things should be made. The Bauhaus is something that has come up in my art studies a lot, and now that I'm studying industrial design I can really see how important that school was. The Bauhaus was the first time that people collected and thought intelligently about design, and that's where industrial design was born. One of the most memorable things I read in Vision in Motion was that design for Americans isn't focused on quality because we are so rich that we buy new models and versions before the old one's are broken. Vision in Motion was written in the fifties, but that idea is still very true today. The Bauhaus look at design through their lens, a war-torn country that needed basics to survive. Buildings became boxes because that was the most functional thing at the time. Functionality is the idea that I'm trying to introduce here. Without functionality, whatever you're designing is useless. It doesn't matter how pretty or expensive the thing is, if it doesn't work well, then you as a designer has failed. Now, you can continue to dissect what is and isn't functional for different groups of people. To a designer in America in the 1950s, it makes sense to replace some parts with cheaper plastic because the user would buy a new one soon, but for Europe in the 1950s, cheaper materials would be bad design. Functionality is everything.
Form and functionality is actually everything. If you buy a knife and you can't figure our how to hold it, then it's bad design, even if that knife is the sharpest knife in the world. Form and function together is what creates great design. The product's physical shape should signify what it does. There are two big words that Don Norman stresses in The Design of Everyday Things, and they are affordances and signifiers. It's much easier to talk design if you understand these two words. An affordance is an action that the product does. A knife affords cutting and holding. Signifiers tell you what the affordances are. In many cases, an affordance is a signifier. A knife affords cutting and the blade signify's that. True good design is able to mix affordances and signifiers without signs, while a bad design needs signifiers to counteract the signifiers that the affordance has. A door that looks like it should be pulled, but really should be pushed, is an example of bad design. You need a sign to tell people the door should be pushed rather than pulled, and that's bad design.
Now, the examples I'm giving make it seems like I'm upset with the things that are badly designed in the world, and one might think, why would I care? The reason is that we as humans aren't supposed to be worried with simple tasks. The reason one needs to design things to make them easy to use is because most people aren't experts in that object. The controls to an airplane are difficult to manage because the people who use them are experts. You shouldn't need to be an expert with computers to write your school paper. I look at design like this, engineers create new things, designers let you use those things. So much of our human stress is caused by bad design. Your entire day could be ruined by a printer that keeps jamming. Many people dismiss the product for their stress but in reality, if you don't know what all those buttons are for on your dishwasher, or which way to plug in a USB cable, it's not your fault. Your job isn't to know how to handle these things, that's the designers' job, and we translate it so you can use it. If you need to read instructions to set up your coffee machine, that machine was designed badly (unless you're like my dad and have a thousand dollar espresso machine for the coffee purists). It's not too much to ask for a reliable product for something as simple as coffee.
The project I'm working on is a tent. Tents are some of the most confusing products out there. Most people who go camping aren't wilderness experts, so why do tents come with pages and pages of instructions if all I want to do is go out for a night? I'm trying to fix that with my tent project, and I'll explain in depth, using the theory I've discussed in this blog post.

Books

I have hit a very interesting artistic block in the past few days. Recently, I wrote an artistic statement about why art is important to me, I'll copy it on here:
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Asking an artist why art is important to them is like asking a sailor why his ship is important to him. Without it, we do not exist. Without art, the person who I am today could not physically exist just as a sailor could not exist without his vessel to travel in. To some, my reasoning may sound less aesthetic than what they might imagine. I don’t need art to convey the deep complexities of my emotions or to try and bring a positive message to the world. I need art to be me. It’s selfish and shallow but that’s the way it should be. Art is important because it is the idea that I sail on everyday, and without it I’d drown.

_______________________________________________________________________________

I have come to accept art as a key part of my life, but I have also chosen to not make art my career. It's a bit hypocritical for me to say that I need art to survive but then decide that I want to be a designer. It all connects, but somewhere I feel a little guilty that I don't want to be a professional artist when I'm older, especially when I so truly believe art to be a part of me. The block that I've reached is in regards to how can I be successful as a designer/ artist. If art is supposed to be so personal to me, then why am I using the artistic skills I've learned to make something that isn't personal, in fact it's the opposite, design is thinking all about the user, and not about me. I've been reading The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman and he describes that one of the biggest flaws in design is the lack of attention on the user, and designing the product for oneself. Isn't that what art is? Is the problem with bad design that it is too artistic and personal? No, I know that's not right because artists are much better designer than engineers. Bad design is bad because it fails to understand the human mentality of approaching an object, making the product too technical and complicated. It's personal because only the person who designed it knows how to use it. That isn't art because as personal as art is, it is still meant to be shared. But at the same time, approaching design as an artist is still wrong because your focus needs to be on the user. Art is personal, bad design is personal. I am an artist and a designer. Is the block clear now?

I'm not really all that worried about it, but that's been the idea rolling around in my head ever since I started really getting into that book. It's fascinating and the more I read about design the more I want to do it. It's just that this love I'm growing for design is coming at a time when I'm just starting to understand art. 

I did get some solace after reading the introduction to An Accidental Masterpiece by Michael Kimmelman when he explained how amateurs are lovers of their craft. I think that I can be content as an amateur of art rather than a professional. Like the herd of people at the piano recital, I can always continue painting. What I really fear is that I might lose the passion for personal art. What if I get so into design, and thinking about the user, that I forget to make art that is personal for me. If I went professional artist then I'd be insuring that I'd make art because that would be my living. As an amateur I rely purely on my own will, and that is scary because I don't know if my will to make art will be as strong as it is now in ten years. I want to be an artist for the rest of my life, but I also want to be a designer, tackling the problems of objects and creating new and creative solutions. I know that they can coexist, but the possibility that they might not is troubling. 

I Am Not Scared

It's ironic how, for the first time in a long time, I'm not scared during what should be a very stressful and scary time in my life. School starts tomorrow, and I've just finished up writing my summer paper and doing some other work for tomorrow and now I feel completely prepared. I'm not scared about the huge amount of work that my college preparation will take, nor am I scared of the difficult classes I'm taking, rather, I look forward to everything I can accomplish this year. There is nothing better than optimism, and this year I have more optimism than I've ever had going into school. I feel that I've reached a point of my life where I can reflect back on and not be disappointed in myself. For the past three years of high school I've been battling trying to discover who I am and that struggle has manifested itself in a lot of disappointing variations of myself. I don't deny that I won't go through more discovery this year, or in the rest of my life, but I think that I have finally chosen a path I can be proud of and I can start to grow in, rather than try and model who I am based on what other people say will make me happy. 

I have decided that I want to go to art school. That decision in itself was one of the most difficult things I ever had to do because of the internal conflict I went through. 

First, I had to accept the idea that I could get into art schools. I've been drawing and painting seriously for less than a year and the idea that I have the ability to get accepted somewhere was hard to grasp for me. Accepting the fact that I'm good enough to get into the schools I want to go to was incredible for my self esteem. 

Second, I had to find something to study. Industrial design was a term that I heard floating around before, but I never thought about it seriously until I started to research what it is industrial designers do. I fell in love with the major after a day of research. As much as I love art, I don't want to spend four years learning how to paint. Finding a major that could fulfill my artistic desires with a more concrete career apart from "artist" after graduation was something I needed if I wanted to pursue art in college 

And thirdly, I had to accept the workload that my decision would entail. The work is enjoyable work, mostly, but that only means that I need to work harder because I'm supposed to like it. I used to want to be like my aunt, spending years in college, getting a doctorate in a very specific category and taking teaching jobs on the side while I travel the world. I abandoned that idea just because I realized that my aunt's career is mostly writing papers, applying for grants and hours of research. I love anything social studies related, but I couldn't accept the workload that a career in that field would entail. I accept the fact that I might have sleepless nights finishing up a project or spend tedious hours trying to draw a live figure model. I understand that it all wont be fun, but I still want to do this. 

Being secure in what I want makes life so much easier. I know what I have to do to get what I want and I'm not scared about failing because right now failure feels impossible.  

Mr. Nobody

I don't know why this film wasn't on my radar for so long. It's such an interesting and beautiful film, and the lack of attention that it gets really surprised me. The movie is about choices. The whole idea of the film is that anything is possible if you don't choose. The film explores the different paths of all of Nemo Nobody's possible lives. While watching the film, it has a sort of Cloud Atlas aspect to it. Cloud Atlas came after this film, but it has the same sci-fi, disconnected storytelling that Mr. Nobody has, but Mr. Nobody is able to tie all of the beautiful paths with a plot that makes you think about the film as a whole, while Cloud Atlas feels separated in my memory.
The main reason I'm blogging about this film is because it feels very STAC. It's one of those films that nobody has heard of but is fantastic. You finish the film with the feeling of "what just happened" which is best feeling to have after experiencing art. What really upsets me is the reviews of this film. It's a general trend that I'm noticing about movie critics, they never analyze the film for what it actually is. Some of the critiques I've read have been nothing but a page of adjectives attached to the single grievance that it's confusing. Yes, it's confusing. It's supposed to be. I hate it when people dismiss a piece of art just because they don't understand it. Imagine if Waiting for Godot was a major motion picture before a play. Imagine how awful it would have been received by critics because "it's confusing". These experts are too focused in it trying to make sense than actually experiencing what is happening. That's how I differentiate the good confusing from the bad. If I'm standing in a museum in front of a piece of wood with nails in it, I try to experience what the piece is conveying, but after a couple of seconds I'm able to dismiss it as stupid and move on. If I stood in front of the piece and started to try and make sense of it, like so many people would, I'd come to the same conclusion, or worse, get caught up in the message of the piece and accept it as good. The ability to experience art is what is missing from the individual.
Take my mother, every so often I accompany her to a film. She get's the satisfaction of spending time with her son, and I get to go to any R-rated movie I want to for free. I try and take her to the best films that I can find or hear about, and sometimes I feel that it's wasted on her. After every film, on the drive home, I try and talk to her about the film, and I notice that most of the movies just fly over her head. I see that her mind focuses on the tiniest details of a film, and overlooks the film itself. For example, last week I went with her to see Lucy. I honestly didn't have high expectations for the film, but that day I was in the mood for some mind numbing sci-fi action so I decided that this film would do fine. I was surprised to actually find some substance in the film, and even though it has its faults in my mind, it still had aspects that could be thought about and discussed. Like first, Lucy as a character. She is the absence of character, which is extremely captivating because it allows the film to take on much more philosophy because there is little need to discuss Lucy's purpose or past, she acts as a vessel for the story to be told, rather than a story told about her. I wish that the filmmakers remembered this and didn't try and Hollywood it up with the French love interest, but the scenes of Lucy losing her humanity were captivating and satisfied more than the creation of a backstory that didn't need to exist. Also, [spoiler] the way Lucy is able to survive after her death in the end. She explains how time is what creates reality, and how without, one cannot exist. The final power Lucy acquires is the ability to control time, and so when Lucy dies in the end, the moment when the consciousness loses time and stops existing, she's able to survive as a sort of ghost, which could be seen when she send the text to the Police officer saying "I am everywhere". Anyway, after all of that, the first comment that I hear from my mother is that she thinks that the movie should have addressed other humans who were able to acquire these super powers, and she specified Jesus. I exploded on the inside when I heard that. First off, the comment makes me think that she wasn't paying attention, or actually, she was paying so much attention on the two minute scene with Morgan Freeman talking about super powered brains that she just decided to check out for the rest of the film. Secondly, the criticism is that an entirely new movie should have been made. That's like asking your friend if she thinks your soup needs salt, and she tells you that the duck would have been better. With a little salt, Lucy would have been amazing. There are honest criticism to be made on the film, like how the car chase scenes and the final break in scene are ridiculous, but people like my mother and movie critics so often ignore what they are looking at to focus on unimportant details.

I Went to Canada and I'm Starting Art Classes

I am currently sitting in a Dunkin Donuts by The Art League of Long Island, waiting for my class to start. For the rest of the class I'm going to be carpooling with Vika, but today, Vika is away and I had to get a ride with my mom. Because of this, I had to arrive two hours before my class started, and now I have two hours to kill. There are better things I could be doing in those two hours, but I thought that I write about my trip to Canada last week.

Canada is an interesting country. It's interesting in that everything is a little different in the english part of Canada, and significantly more different in the French part. Toronto isn't a pretty city in my mind. On monday morning, my mother and I flew into Toronto and we proceeded to visit the first university I had on my list. Glendon College at York University is this tiny little campus in the suburbs of Toronto. The whole idea of the university is that it has a bilingual education. It's one of the only schools I had found anywhere that has a program like this. My main reason for wanting to study in Canada is so that I can really learn French in a French environment. Spanish is easy to learn and practice because I live so close to other spanish-speakers, even now in the coffee shop the ladies are speaking in Spanish. I don't want to study language, I just want to speak them. I don't care much about getting ultra technical with spanish or french. I want to know enough to get by in conversation and be fluent in the same way that one becomes fluent in their native language. Glendon offered me that opportunity, but nothing else. I don't like the school. It's boring and tiny. I don't want to go to a school of 2,700 students and have a tiny list of things I can study. I don't see myself studying political science or anything like that.

After that day, my mother and I drove to Montreal in a rented car with a Massachusetts license plate which really killed the whole "don't treat me like a tourist" vibe I was trying to achieve. Montreal is a wonderful city. It's beautiful and there is still so much left for me to explore there. We arrived in Montreal on Tuesday, July 1st, which for all the culturally inept is Canada Day, which is independence day but Canadian. 

***Side-note*** It is hilarious how white girls order their coffee.

Also, that same night was part of the famous Jazz Festival that Montreal hosts each year. We went to the festival, saw some guy whose name I forgot, and ate cheese for dinner. Our hotel was located right by where the universities were. McGill University and Concordia University are the two huge english schools in Montreal. Along with those, UQAM and Université de Montréal are the french schools. Together, all the universities in Montreal make the largest student per capita population in all of North America, according to the pamphlets. I could see that. College kids where everywhere, the amount of young people was both intimidating and fantastic. 

The following day, we went to see Concordia University, which was the only school that had any sort of fine arts department. I feel in love with the school over the internet. It was perfect to me because it has everything that I want. It's in the middle of a mainly French environment. It has a design program. It's big. It's different. We arrived at the tour and I feel in love with the school even more. It's facilities were beautiful, and mainly new, except for the dorms. The whole school felt like a campus, but also didn't because your in a city. All the buildings are connected by underground tunnels, so that in the winter you don't have to freeze walking between classes, but it also created this sense of campus. As long as I didn't walk out the doors, I didn't need to know French, but at the same time, if I wanted to practice my French, all I'd have to do is buy a coffee outside. 

McGill was different from Concordia in the regard. I love McGill. It's a beautiful school, but it's enclosed. McGill has a proper campus. There's a field surrounded by these beautiful old buildings, and the campus stretches out all over the upper part of Montreal. I wouldn't need to know French to go there. I could manage with only english for the entire four years. I don't want to be pushed into speaking French, but McGill feels like is pushing you against it. Besides that, I loved the school. I took the tour and it was fantastic. The biggest problem again was that there wasn't any program there that I'd want to study. I wouldn't know which school I'd want to apply to. If I can't study the program that I want to, like Design or New Media, than I'd want to study Urban Planning. McGill has that program, but it's in its engineering school. I cannot get into that school. My grades in math and science aren't awful, but there not engineering school quality. And then if I realized in my first year that I actually hate Urban Planning, I'd be stuck and could only choose science and math based majors in the Engineering School. If not that, then I could apply to the Arts Faculty, but then I'd be in the same position as I was at Glendon. I don't want to study political science or language, and the other degrees there don't interest me at all. I could go undecided into the Faculty, but it wouldn't be what I want because each Faculty has less options to choose from. 

In the end I have added McGill and Concordia to the list of school I will apply to. I've taken out Glendon completely, and it was good that I visited. If I hadn't, I might have not ever seriously considered McGill, and I probably wouldn't have dismissed Glendon.