My First Day/Night at School

Last night Alex and I took the commuter rail up to the beautiful town of Waltham, not so much for the nature beauty or ambiance of this little town, but because my long awaited photography program began. I'm pretty excited to have something to do--it's been a long long long 6 months here and I'm hoping, as the saying goes, that "time flies when you're having fun."

As with all educational institutions, the first day is boring with a capital B. The approach to the first day, from grammar schools to professional photography schools worldwide is always the same--a big chunk of time spent reading the rules and regulations and, everyone's favorite, the get to know you/me activities. These diversions from the more important issues at hand, in this case photography, always require an incredibly unique and captivating description of oneself to a room full of complete, but not for long, strangers. Why is it I am always one of the last people to go and when my turn arrives I'm sweating bullets and need to use the bathroom? If the conversation in my head were to be aired, people would think I had multiple personality disorder. The voices go something like this: "What would happen if I said I was a published author who can speak 12 obscure languages and hope to aspire to become a pornography photographer?" I steer myself back with "no, you are an adult, say something adult and silence your inner Katrinka” (note: Katrinka was the bad, and make believe, girl I blamed things on as a kid--like the time I tried to flush a brush down the toilet).
Last nights introductions were not unique in that they required some gimmicky addition to “Hello my name is…”. In this case, were asked to talk about a place we'd recently been, something we like to do, something we've always wanted to do, and a place we'd rather be, if we ever dared to not want to be there. Wanting to sound as interesting as possible I naturally pulled the Ghana card. I mean who could blame me? How many people have been to Ghana and can say their husband grew up there? The rest wasn't so exciting. I like to eat and knit, I'd like to milk a cow, and I would of course rather be in Seattle, but only if I wasn't able to be in that room at that very moment.

Another one of the activities, one which I had never encountered before, required me to count the number of f's on the small card I was handed.

Go ahead and count for yourself.

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY COMBINED WITH THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS.

How many did you get?

I got 4. I was told to recount, again I counted 4. Then all of the people like me were told to stand in a corner of the room while the rest of the people, the people who counted the correct number of Fs were opposite us. Finally the truth, and the point of the exercise, were revealed: There are 6 f's (I think) and over the next year and half the people who only saw 4fs would learn to see all the f's they couldn’t see before. Uhm, okay, so is it just me or does that statement seem like a big dunce hat? For the record, my hat was tallest. J

Well, it's not that big of a deal. I'm just being..... well.... me :)

I'm looking forward to tomorrow's trip out to wonderful Waltham. I have homework, which is exciting. I have to start cataloguing photos I like--I'm not prone to walking around with scissors so I think I'll create an electronic file. I also have to bring in a photo I find especially well done or captivating--not sure what I'll bring yet, but I'll post it here when I do.