On Campus
On campus today and tomorrow for my 'long days' so the blog will be quiet. To hold you over until then here’s a riddle for you: Why are boys smarter than girls, but not?
Continue after the break to see the answer.
October 18, 2006
On campus today and tomorrow for my 'long days' so the blog will be quiet. To hold you over until then here’s a riddle for you: Why are boys smarter than girls, but not?
October 12, 2006
classes
Reminder: Wednesdays and Thursdays are my long days on Campus. So blog will be quiet.
October 04, 2006
Oliver Stone is here
I’m in my Web Studio class right now. We were just told that class is getting out an hour early because director/producer Oliver Stone is on campus today. He’s apparently a guest speaker for a class that is about him and everyone from the program is invited to go.
HELLO! Tonight is season premier of “Lost.” What is wrong with all these people at American University? Don’t they get that seasons premiers are 100 times more important that meeting the director of “JFK” “Natural Born Killers” “Any Given Sunday” and a billion other movies? ...now if it was Joss Whedon, J.J. Abrams or mayb Joe Q. then it would be worth taping "Lost," but not for anyone else.
But hey whatever. It means that I get to get home for sure in time for “Lost.”
On Campus
Reminder: Today and Tomorrow are my days on campus so the blog will be quiet. To hold you over until then here’s a riddle for you: Why are boys superior to girls, but not?
Continue after the break to see the answer.
October 03, 2006
National Depression Screening Day
I got an an email I got from school, today is National Depression Screening Day:
National Depression Screening Day. Are you sad, irritable, worried, hyper? People say college is supposed to be great, but sometimes college students feel anxious, disconnected, and alone. Help could be just a click away. Confidential online screening for depression is available at www.american.edu/counseling. October is Mental Health Awareness Month, and National Depression Screening Day is October 5. The online screening program is available year round for the AU community.
I took an online test and apparently I’m not depressed, but I have a sleep disorder. DUH! I’ve known since middle school I have sleeping problems. Also, I’m apparently not addicted to the internet or prescription drugs.
Also, my favorite question from the quizzes was, “Have you ever had a week or more of sustained out-of-control behavior such as lots of risky sex?” I don’t know why but I just found that amusing.
An Inconvenient Scheduling
Tonight at school, my program is holding a special screening of “An Inconvenient Truth.” It’s a documentary that follows former Vice President Al Gore’s fervent crusade to halt global warming’s deadly progress. It’s supposedly really good and rumor has it that the film’s creator and even Gore may be there tonight.Of course you are reading this and thinking “hmmm I guess Scott is going.” Well you are wrong. Tonight is the season premier of “Veronica Mars,” which is 100 billion times more important than some stupid documentary about a former politician.
October 02, 2006
Web Studio Class
For Web Studio I had to design a mock-up for a site Harley-Davidson could use for a fall sale. We were given the slogan and a couple of other things. Basically it was an annoying project and this is what I did. I understand why we are taking things so slow but its frustrating when most of the work feels like busy-work.
September 30, 2006
Making Prints
I was on campus making prints from negatives for almost 12 hours. It was horrible. In that time I only got six done! Plus, with two of them I really should have gone back and fixed them even more, but I just didn't have patients for it.
The above pic is a photo of a print I made (the real print doesn't have the glare on her forehead, is in focus, and the color tones look better). This is my Aunt Laurie when she married my Uncle Tim two weeks ago. This photo is seconds before she walked down the isle. I made a print of this becuase we need to have one with a blurred motion. So I just loved how her hands are blurring from trying to cool her self off.
September 28, 2006
Photography
We have three major projects in my photography class and the first one is due next Thursday. For it we have to have three prints (a print is a photo you print/develop from a negative).
Since the semester started I’ve used 12 rolls of film, so I have a lot of photos to chose from for the assignment. I think some of mine are so good that I’ll even be able to use some for the second assignment.
I’ve very excited because I now have all 12 rolls developed. I’m very sad because I still have to make 7 contact sheets and print my six prints (The pic above is actually of some of my contact sheets I already made).
I know printing a print doesn’t sound like a big deal but it’s a bitch. It’s 100 times worse than developing a roll of film. See first you have to make several “test” version of the photo you want to print to try and figure out how long you want to expose the negative to light (The more light you use the darker it will be).
Then after you have the right time for the overall photo you have to “burn” and “doge” which means over exposing and under exposing parts of your print so that some parts are darker and some parts are lighter.
Burning and dodging is a pain in the ass. I can do it in a matter of seconds in Photoshop but doing it in the photo lab can take hours and hours and hours! Ahhhhhhhhhhhh.
So needless to say, Saturday from noon till midnight I will be at the photo lab printing my six prints. I’m even worried that in twelve hours I won’t have enough time to do all of them.
The one good side to all of this is that I officially have two more rolls of film I have to do for the class. After that I’m allowed to switch to fancy digital cameras that the school is letting us use for free.
Also, next week, we get to learn how to scan our negatives onto the computer. Once I learn that I’ll scan all my negatives and set up a gallery.
College Girls
This Amanda. She is hot (for some reason my other photos from my cell are blurry so this is the best I had).Whenever I’m on campus on Thursdays I have a break from 2p.m. till 5:30p.m. Today I spent most of that in the photo lab working on our first major project that is due next week but from 4 till 5:30 I chilled in the big lounge where I normally chill.
So as I was “chilling” today this girl came over and sat down across from me. She was talking on the phone and fighting with her boyfriend. I could tell she was upset. He apparently was ditching her for dinner and going to something for the “row team.”
Being the pimp I am I said to her, “Yeah, you should just dump him. He’s obviously gay if he’d rather be hanging out with a bunch of guys than a hotty like you.”
She must have found me charming because we spent an hour hanging out and got dinner from the cafeteria. I learned that she’s 21 and a junior and has been dating the guy for six months. After we hung out she asked for my number. Still being Pimp-Daddy-King, I told her “I would give you my number but to be honest I’ve broken up soooooo many couples that I’ve learned its best to not give it out to beautiful girls who are dating assholes. MAYBE I can give you my screen name or email or something, but I really don’t think a phone number is best until you break up with your boyfriend.”
She was very excited to get my AIM screen name and used her cell phone to add it to her buddy list right away. …NOW I just need her to break up with her boyfriend, but we all know that girls like this NEVER do that.
September 14, 2006
I hate thursdays
It's Thursday, which means I'll on campus for 13 hours today, so expect no posts until late tonight or tomorrow. But I will leave you with this riddle, the answer is after the break:
Yesterday, when I was on campus, a woman walked up to me and said, "Everything I say to you is a lie." Was she telling me the truth or was she lying?
September 02, 2006
Finical Aid
[The above photos is the center of campus the other day for some thing they had]
American University has been KILLING me when it comes to finical aid and my refund check. I’ve had so many problems and have dealt with more crap here than I did at JMU and Towson combined.
The first problem is that when you have a problem, there isn’t anyone that can help you out. If you call the office and explain to them your problem, they just transfer you to someone else who is never there. You are forced to leave a voice mail and you never get a call back. Then if you call later, explain your problem again, they transfer you to a completely different voice mail who also never calls back.
What’s been going on with me is that I’m very anal when it comes to getting my paperwork done and being on top of everything I need to get done. For MONTHS I’ve been calling the office to check in and just make sure everything is ok. I’m told “yes” over and over and over again.
Well two weeks ago I expected to get my refund check from Student Accounts (different from finical aid). I went to get it and was told I didn’t have one. Apparently there was a form I was supposed to fill out and send in that told the school I wanted a refund check. Finical aid was supposed to tell me this and they never did.
I filled out the form and turned it in. I was told it would take 10 business days for everything to get cleared up. I was also told that EVERYTHING was ok now.
Those 10 days went by and on this past Wednesday I went again to get my refund check. This time Student Accounts told me that Finical Aid put a hold on my account. I go to the Fin Aid office and ask WHY. I’m told that they don’t have any record of me signing my promissory note on my loans nor do they have records of me turning in my online loan counseling confirmation. Of course I HAD done both.
I had to call my loan lender and have them fax a letter to Fin Aid explaining that I have in fact signed my promissory note. Then I had to get another letter faxed proving that I did everything I was supposed to do for my online counseling.
Finally yesterday, Fin Aid lifted the hold on my account. I called Student Accounts and they said that now EVERYTHING was ok. I also spoke to their chief accountant and explained him my situation. He said that their office is closed on Monday, but he’ll put a rush on my refund check and hopefully it would be ready at 2p.m. on Tuesday. If for some reason it isn’t he told me to call him back personally.
…so hopefully everything is ok now, but MAN it’s been a bitch.
Sarah’s Wannabee
In my photography class there is a Sarah-wannabee [the real Sarah is in the photo to the right]. Physically the girl and Sarah don’t look too much a like. Both are pale and have freckles. Both have longer hair and are thin, but that’s it. Yet style and personality they totally match up. The girl had a pair of brown cargo pants that look exactly like a pair Sarah has. She was also wearing brown skater-shoes that are very Sarah-like. The girl also had a bright green t-shirt that was about protecting the environment, which she said she bought a thrift store, totally a Sarah-thing!
It gets better. The girl is a vegan and for undgrad she received her degree in biology and animal behavior, just like Sarah.
Weird, huh?
Classes
This week was the first week of classes. They were interesting. I feel much better about grad school now. I was slightly worried that the classes would just rehash stuff I already knew or learned as an undgrad.
The first class of the week is Web Studio on Wednesdays from 5:30 p.m. till 8 p.m. I thought the class was going to be “This is how you use Dreamweaver. This is how you use flash.” ...so I wasn’t looking forward for it. I’m familiar with both programs and use them for my website.
But the professor seems cool and seems to know what she’s doing. The class does teach software, but is more about theory behind running a website and the creative aspect of designing. So the class should be a much larger benefit.
Even cooler is that for my project I’m going to re-design this site and fix some big problems while adding new features. The biggest thing that bugs me right now is how the blog doesn’t perfectly match with my non-blog pages.
The next class of the week was Principles of Photography from 10 a.m. till 2 p.m. on Thursdays. I have a feeling I’m going to hate this class. I’m not an artsy person. I’ve never been an artsy person. I want to write and produce. I don’t want to direct or do cinematography. It’s not that I think there is anything wrong with art, it’s just that my brain doesn’t work that way. My brain focuses on story and entertainment.
So I know photography is going to be a HARD class for me. I already know enough about the technical side of things so I won’t have to learn about camera lens, f-stops, or apertures because I’ve learned all of that already in film classes. The hard part for me will be trying to think of the deeper meaning and messages behind photos.
Even worse is that we have to work with chemicals! It’s one thing to have to be artsy and take photos, but then to have to develop them yourself is torture. I have a super sensitive nose and I HATE being dirty. So I’m worried I’m too much of a wuss to handle the chemicals and developing photos.
Just like with web studio I’m going to use the class with a project I’m already working on. I’m going to take really artsy photos of my dad for my graphic novel. I need a cover, chapter breaks, pics for a flashback and an epilogue.
The final class of the week is Producing. It’s weird because I took a producing class at Towson. It was the best class I took in all of college. Well it turns out this is almost exactly the same thing.
So I wrote up this LONG pitch and emailed it to my teacher explaining that instead of doing the normal stuff on the syllabus he should let me use one of my own screenplays and handle all of my projects as if they were real. I have no idea if he’ll let me or not but if so that’s awesome! I’ll get to do something I enjoy. I’ll get to develop one of my screenplays (develop means doing break downs, scheduling, budget and proposals to investors) that when finished I could take and actually pitch to people. Plus I’ll have an experienced guy helping me out along the way. So I’m excited to found out if my teacher will let me.
The only really WEIRD thing about my classes is that with the exception of photography my classes are filled with older students. I don’t mean “older” as in age, I mean as in this is their second or third year in the program. In Producing I’m the only student who isn’t a third year student so I just feel slightly out of place because everyone already knows everyone. I’m worried too that because everyone knows everyone it will be harder for me to try and meet people and make friends.
August 30, 2006
Ouch
So I sliced my thumb up tonight. It hurts like a bitch. The cut isn't very long but it's really deep, but because the skin is flapped over, I'm not sure you can tell that in the picture. Also, all those hairy things on my thumb are pieces of the cloth I was using to help stop the bleeding.
Basically I got home from campus and was beat. I went to cook dinner. I reached into the silverware drawer. A knife was hidden. I grabbed it and it sliced me up. The stupid cut took 30 minutes to stop bleeding. I’m pretty sure I need a few stitches, but being terrified of needles, I’m not going to get any. If it doesn’t start to seal up in a day or so I’m just going to put superglue on it.
Class was interesting tonight. I’m too tired to type up how it went. I’ll have a full report about my first two days at American University tomorrow night.
First Day of Grad School
Today is the first day of grad school. I only have one class today and really its tonight from 5:30 to 8, but I have tons of errands to do around campus so I'm heading there super-super early. Tomorrow is my official long day. I have class from 10a.m. till 8p.m. so my postings will most likely be on the quiet side.
August 28, 2006
Cultured
I feel so cultured being a student at American University. I got an email today, telling about the biggest events this week and there were three things on it: a Nationals game, Career Center open house, and a “Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Ally Resource Center Fall Mixer.”
August 26, 2006
Orientation
Yesterday was the mandatory Orientation for grad school. Surprise surprise, it sucked.
It was just pointless. I didn’t gain anything out of it. Maybe if I hadn’t gone to an open house before applying or maybe if I hadn’t gone to “new students day” after being admitted it would have been useful, but there wasn’t anything yesterday that I hadn’t already known.
The School of Communication’s graduate program at American University has three sections. The first is Speech (this is for like speech writing, PR, or running political campaigns). The second is Journalism and the third is Film.
Out of like 100 people, like 50 were Speech. The rest was split between Journalism and Film. It was frustrating ‘cause ALL the young (my age) hot girls were in Speech.
You know what sucked worse? I was the fattest person out of everyone there. Ok let me be a little more specific. I was the ONLY fat person there! Everyone was stick thin. I’ve never seen so many anorexic looking girls in one place since I met all the women from Miss USA contest last spring.
So that sucked.
August 24, 2006
AU
I have my mandatory orientation tomorrow for American University. It starts super early, lasts alllllllllllll day long, and then there is traffic to deal with, so my postings will be quiet.
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