things i have learned/experienced over the past four years of college.

-someone will be your friend one day, and then the next day they will treat you like a complete stranger.

-if you throw a party for yourself, odds are you probably won't enjoy yourself to extent that you hope to. if you throw a birthday party for someone else, it will be a really great time. if you go to a party alone, odds are, you will be uncomfortable.

-the cafeteria needs to have to-go cups more often.

-give yourself 10-15 minutes to get to class if you live on campus. give yourself an hour if you live ten miles away. damn.

-people will still hold mistakes you made against you even though you were ultra-drunk at the time they were made.

-people will threaten to call the RA on you for one incident.

-your annoying roomate will accuse you of stealing the food that YOU bought for them. what.

-your freshman/sophomore roomate experience will probably be the best you'll ever have.

-your roomate will keep their bread and peanut butter locked in a duffle bag at the foot of their bed.

-do yourself a favor and live off campus in your upperclassmen years, by golly.

my first day of senior year...as a commuter.

i made the decision to commute a bit later into the summer. it was brought up over a casual discussion during lunch at the olive garden with my mom, sister, and my sister's best friend. since my sister had the extra room at her house for me, i figured "why not?" it's a 15-20 minute drive to and from school, which beats the 45 minute ride from home. it also dawned upon me that i have gone home numerous weekends over the past three years at school. i admit i am a huge homebody and love being closer to my family. no matter where i go, i love to be in a more home-y setting. and i also thought of how much money we would be saving...there was no point to me living in a dorm anymore if i were to go home and visit my other friends at school every other weekend. plus i only had class four days of the week, with only one class on thursdays. that's pretty much half the week at school and half at home. i basically looked at my dorm as a place to sleep. it just didn't appeal to me as much anymore.

i put a lot of consideration into it over the next couple of days and made a big list of pro's and con's to commuting. it seemed that the pro's list was a lot larger than the con's list, which was a sign. i decided to commute.

yesterday was the first day of commuting. i woke up at the crack of 6 o'clock a.m. without the help of my alarm. I headed out at about 7:30 for my 8:30 class. I arrived at school around 8 and had no trouble finding a parking space in the commuter lot. it was sunny so i didn't have to worry about the frustration of carrying an umbrella to keep me dry. i headed to my first class and saw my friend Dillon there, who is also a commuter. my first class was Art & Myth, and was pretty awesome. it puts a lot of emphasis on creation of your own fantastical story. this class will stretch and strengthen what i already know about storytelling and creating characers from my head. after that i had seen that my friend Sarah, who is one of my best friends at school, had texted me to call her when i was free from class. she invited me over to Park River, where i lived last year. it is one of the nicer dorms on campus. i arrived to find they had replaced the old furniture with new, and their apartment looked fantastic. Sarah had a single, which had a closet bigger than any i have ever seen before....it's twice as deep as hers at home! we chatted and i helped her hang up a couple posters. we headed for lunch at Commons (which i still love). afterwards i hung out in Gengras, the student union, until my 2:55 class. yikes. i basically had to wait an hour and a half. that's one thing i know i have to get used to...waiting around for class. but new assignments will occupy my time i'm sure. i had art history, then advertising illustration. our first assignment is to create a win label with an animal on it, because apparently people are more likely to buy a wine with an animal on the label. who knew.

i then made the mistake to go home on the highway and hit 40 minutes of traffic trying to get on 91 south. bad idea at 5 o'clock. i don't mind commuting. as long as i give myself plenty of time to get to school, it won't bother me. i commuted to both my internships this summer and didn't mind at all. i know things that could potentially frustrate me are if i accidentally forgot an art supply or if the weather was terrible driving into school.

it's the better option for me though, and yesterday made me really happy with my decision :)

i'm going to be completely honest.

so, that last post, it's about getting over a past relationship, right?

okay. well i just want to clear some things up and get this stuff out of my head once and for all. we all know my last relationship was a bad one. it ended like, 3 years ago mind you.

some people thought that i wasn't over him because all i could talk about was how crappily he treated me. honestly, i WAS over him, but NOT over the way he had treated me. not introducing me as his girlfriend, breaking up over a text message, and many other ridiculous things....really...no one wants to be treated that way.

one of my biggest pet peeves is how people (ex-friends, ex-boyfriends) can be so cruel and talk smack about you to others like you're the worst person on the planet. well, i will tell you what. if someone makes a judgement about you and tells everyone else, screw it. because the only opinion of yourself that should matter is your own. don't care what other people think because half the time it's made up smack that people spread without any hard evidence. they talk about it and think it's "juicy," getting a stunned reaction from listeners.

i've learned that a lot of people who are insecure with themselves will take a little bit of a problem and blow it up, making them seem like the innocent ones. they feel powerful knowing that they can conceal their problems by making other people seem like the "problem." this goes out to all the people who have talked about me behind my back and told lies about me. i know i'm a good person, and if you judge me by one mistake, you shouldn't even call yourself a friend of mine. i'm better off without people who can't see through all the drama others create.

if anyone wants to believe all that bull about me, that's great! take the easy way out! but i never make judgements on people based on what i hear from others. EVER. i know a person when i genuinely get to know them myself. and i'll tell you, some of those people who have had others talk negatively about them are actually some of the nicest people i know. so make your own judgments. you know what you like and what kind of people you like to be around, so don't get lazy. go and get to know them yourself.

the good of it all

this is an entry from the website "LettersIllNeverSend.com."

it speaks to me and my past relationship to say the least. it really helped me get over it once and for all.

"I hate you. I hate you for doing what you did to me. I hate you for stringing me along. I hate you for being able to carry on with your life. I hate you for hurting me.

I hate myself for ever caring about you. I hate myself for not learning my lesson the first time. I hate myself for believing you. I hate myself for not listening to my gut. I hate myself for being your fool.

Even though I hate you, I love you for showing me true happiness in my life without you in it. I love you for leaving my life so that good things could happen. And I love you for losing me so that someone better can one day take your place.

I love myself for letting you go and finally being able to be happy without you, or anyone. I love myself for having the strength to be alone. I love myself; I have never loved myself before because I always depended on someone else to do it for me. Thank you for showing me how."

it's mid november...and i am going to sicily in the spring!

hey all. so on the 4th of this month i went on a field trip with the illustration department to the society of illustrator's show in NYC. it was of children's book art, so it was right up my alley. there were so many different techniques and styles used, from digital collage to pen and ink with digital color to ripped paper collage to hyper-realistic pieces (one of which was from our teacher Bill Thomson for his children's book "Chalk"). Seeing all the different techniques up close is really interesting...no two artists' pieces were done in the EXACT same style. that's one thing i've come to learn and love about illustrating. we as illustrators look at the world and paint it through our OWN eyes, not the eyes of everyone else. basically, we have our own ways of perceiving things. my style is falling between realistic and cartoony, and i'm pretty happy with that because a lot of that cartoony-ness comes from my drawings when i was younger. i never really drew what i saw, i just drew what came out of my head: ladies with extravagant dresses, cross-sections of houses and buildings with lots of teeny tiny details, and my own takes on storybook characters. i have books and notebooks full of drawings from when i was little. i used to always take a notebook and pen with me when i was younger....drawing was my entertainment without anyone having to force me to do it.

well that was quite a ramble. after we went to the society of illustrators show we got back on the bus and went to the new britain museum of art, where they were having an m.c. escher show. i was blown away...seeing his stuff in person was incredible. some of my favorites were woodcuts from 1931 for a book called "The Terrible Adventures of Scholastica," which were about a witch named Scholastica. i really love the way woodcuts and scratchboard look, just the black and white. i really hope i can take relief printing next year. i'm pretty sure i will be able to fit it into my schedule since i have signed up for four studios next semester. dun dun dunnn...which i haven't done before. a lot of my friends have taken four studios and survived, so i think i will be ok. i have to take acrylic and oil illustration, which are required. then i am taking two special topics painting classes. one of which is called "art in healthcare," which is like an art therapy class. SO excited. then my second is SICILY PAINTING!!!! i am ecstatic!!! i applied a couple weeks ago and got accepted this week! i think this course consists of studying different sketching/art techniques all semester, as well as learning about the Sicilian culture. then we actually GO to Sicily over spring break! what a good opportunity...i personally don't really love the idea of going abroad for an ENTIRE semester, because as an illustrator i don't really want to miss the classes i need to take to graduate. but this opportunity of only going for a week is amazing! we will be painting and sketching the whole time, and there will be a show of our art in the fall! i hear there are only about 8-11 people going, which is cool. i only know a couple people actually going....no one has really said anything about the definites yet. oh well, guess i'll just wait and see who is in my class in the spring. :)

everyone's already talking christmas. oh boy...

thought of the day

to me, life is more about doing what you love rather than what you can’t stand.

salem and my birthday two weeks ago

i know i have not written since august, but hey, i figured i was really bored and have pretty much no homework today. i have a one-page art history paper due thursday, but oh well. perhaps i will just watch "it might get loud" later...such a good documentary. it's with jimmy page from led zeppelin, the edge from u2, and my favorite, jack white of the white stripes/raconteurs/the dead weather. i watched it for the first time this summer with jon, and he later bought it for me. so good.

well i am officially 21. it's odd. that's all i will have to say. my family got me luggage for my birthday, and i'm actually pretty happy to have my own set. on one of our family pieces of luggage, the extendable arm to pull the suitcase on wheels won't open, so it's pretty annoying. my luggage is a pretty deep maroon color. i can't wait to use it when i go to bermuda with the browns this coming summer. i am considering on applying to several internships again for next summer, a couple of which are in missouri. eek. i am very set on going on this cruise to bermuda, though. i keep thinking to myself that this is going to be my last official summer vacation (unless i end up teaching for some reason), and i want to still enjoy my life while i'm young. i think life is more about having fun and doing what you want/love while you're still young instead of wishing you could go back and do those sorts of things when you're older and sucked into your job. i have no idea what my job situation will be....part of me feels i have the potential to really push to get an artistic job, but another part of me keeps reminding me that lots and lots of people who graduate with a college degree do NOT get a job in their desired field...i hope going to art school was not a waste. i remember several times over the past few years at college when i reconsidered my major and wondered if i should leave the art school. i'm glad i've stayed, because it's like damn, i have been doing art since i was in my high chair. it would be an absolute waste for me to stop doing something that i've been doing my whole life. it brings me too much joy.

it's funny, but a random tidbit i learned from my art history class: rembrandt absolutely loved his own art, but at the time, people HATED it. he was almost always broke, but he kept doing what he loved. his last self-portrait of himself depicts him as an old man, laughing. i love it.

yesterday my suitemates and i went to salem. it was fairly spooky....the last time i went i was about 12 i believe, and it was with Girl Scouts. it only cost us $10 per person to go yesterday...such a good deal. we went to the salem witch museum, then shopped along the streets. it was really cold and windy, but still interesting and fun. we decided to go to this attraction called "the witches cottage." it was a "4-D" experience, with people on stage in this tiny little theater scaring the crap out of you. it was fun for me cause i love getting scared for some odd reason. then we went across the street and did the witch dungeon museum. it was a really good re-enactment of the trial of elizabeth proctor. the tour led us down into a recreation of the dungeon used to keep the accused victims of the witch trials in 1692. the original dungeon was dismanteled in the 1950's. they had one of the original wooden beams from the dungeon in the museem, and the woman who ran the tour said if you touched it, it would bring you good luck. we touched it and i was really spooked hahaha. i learned that if you were put into a dungeon during that time, you had to PAY to be in jail, and pay for a decent sized cell. you had to pay for food and even a bed. ridiculous. they told us one of the types of cells they used was called a "coffin cell", in which a person was chained to the wall and the cell was built directly around and up against them. people would stay inside those cells for months. that is awful.

it's amazing to me how big of a mistake the whole witch trails were. people realized once they were over, they had made a huge mistake for killing those 20 or so people. i also learned that during the 1600's and aroud then, women were barely permitted to do anything outside of the house. the girls going to meet tituba in the woods to play games and do magic tricks was all in good fun. i can see how they'd get wrapped up in it since they had nothing better to do for fun back in the day. i can picture how it got so blown out of proportion because they probably fed off each others' excitement and fear. anything not in the bible was considered devil's work during that time.

the last thing i learned is about the public's perception of witches. witches are really people who practice the wicca religion, where there is a god and a goddess and their practices honor the changing of the seasons and relationship to the earth. the term "warlock" is never used, for it means "traitor." the reason why witches are popularyly portrayed as evil is because of instances like the salem witch trials, where "witches" were considered followers of the devil. because their practices were not in the bible, people referred to them as ugly, child-eating, green-faced ladies on broomsticks. so bizarre but really interesting.

overall when it comes to salem, i feel like if you go once, it's enough. i feel like the only time really worth going again (if i ever do) is actually on halloween. that must be so awesome. i saw a few signs for events they are having there over the next couple weekends. one is a "grimm fairtyale" party, where you have to dress as a grimm fairytale character....so awesome. another was a "vampire's ball" where you have to dress glamourous and gothic. that seems so cool and intriguing.

i am in love with the halloween season, and autumn. but come and go halloween, it is such a debbie downer afterwards. celebrating halloween at college isn't really my favorite...nothing beats trick or treating as a kid. i have no idea what i am going to be for halloween, nor what i am doing. hopefully i will figure that out soon!