Week Seven

This session has been unbelievably stressful. More than anything I have probably endured before. Stress with assignments, stress with workload, stress with friends... It has been an amazing ride. The first four weeks consisted of the three group projects. We worked every day of the week for three weeks, often over twelve hours a day. I worked ten hours a week, my fault, and that added to the overall load. I am so tired at this point that if I sleep more than four hours a night I am more tired the next day than if I stick to my newly established routine. I am relatively healthy, though, thanks to pounding about thirty supplements a day, so I am making it through. One more week. My final critique is this week. At that point I will show my instructor my final ten images, and I am hoping to also have five extra credit images to go on top of that to try and regain some of my footing towards reclaiming my 4.0. Right now, one A- has dropped me to a 3.94. ONE! And the ridiculous thing is that it counted in my GPA as a 3.7 when I earned a 3.92 in the class. Crazy. So tired. So sore. I dropped a light on my left pinky on Thursday and it is black and blue from the palm to the first knuckle. I slid the weight of the black glass onto my leg on Wednesday and it has left a nice little expanding bruise, and today I swung a twenty pound retaining wall brick into my right knee cap and it is already bruising as well. The biggest spider I have seen up here waltzed under my ridiculously poorly sealed door last night and I slammed a glass down on top of him, used a dark slide from my 4 x 5 to scoop him up and threw him outside because I was too emotionally drained to deal with spider goo on my floor if I had the courage to smash him. I have comfort only in that after I threw him, he ran away from my door.

Next session will be a welcome relief. Next session the course work is supposed to be remarkably less grueling. Next session I start my Internship with a local Travel and Stock Photographer. Next session I yet again will be a TA for my favorite instructor, only this time I will be able to breathe when I grade, and I will be able to have conversations with him that don't start with the phrase "I only have a minute, but we have serious problems..." At least now they can be "Hey, you wanna talk about the serious problems we have? Because I have time. Like, hours if you want..." That will be a relief. Easy course work. Internship learning. TAing. Sounds like heaven.