Winter 2016 Retrospective

The Gala is over, I’ve got my grades, and soon I’ll have my AS degree in Photographic Technology (as well as a Certificate in Photographic Imaging). With only a week between terms¹, I haven’t had time to figure out how to get everything properly put away, let alone for reflecting on what happened last term.

However, there are some things I learned that don’t really require a lot of introspection:

1. Working three classes as well as taking three classes as well as doing my other work is really, really, really hard. I partly did this as a test to see if I was up to full-time school (even though technically I wasn’t full-time) when doing teaching assistant work. This would be the only way I could get through grad school (working and taking classes) and I’m not sure I have the energy for that anymore. Frankly, I’m not sure I ever had the energy for that, since I did much better in my early college career when I didn’t have to do work/study.
2. The fear I had that my portfolio wouldn’t seem cohesive (“a unified body of work”) was well-founded. I had talked it over with my instructor, and she felt that each piece led to the same place. However, that didn’t come across in the short time that my reviewers had with the work.
3. I’d rather discuss readings than be lectured to from the book.

There is more nuance to all of these points, but the gist of my term is “Wow, I’m tired and I’m not sure grad school is for me after all.”