Salsa Midterm

I worked until 4 am last night then got up at 8 for a full day of classes. Not too many of us had good models (including me) so the studio instructor was ripping into us. One of my models was nothing more than a peiece of colored cardboard, kind of sad, but I attempted to show elevation through color. I still need to make it. In architectural construction, we started learning about statics. The pace of this class is incredibly slow. All we got today was Newton's third law, and Hooke's law about the "springiness of buildings." I feel really bad for the professor since everyone comes directly from Smurf's lecture, usually after working all night in studio and generally exhausted.

An aside about Scott Murff (Smurf)- I shouldn't rip into him as much as I do. He's really very nice and willing to talk with you on an individual basis if you go up to his office. Other studio teachers and upper division students think highly of his abilities too. Another factor is that I'm rarely in a leinant mood at 8:40 AM. The class is good sicne it shows you who your real competition is- those guys and girls who make that commitment to get up and show up. Howerver, these people also tend to be really sticklers for programmatic details. It took me awhile to learn, but programs are designed to be deliberately vauge. We're encouraged to find and exploit loopholes, and follow only the letter of the law. Anything not specificially prohibited is fair game. The problem is you get a group of students (would-be honors college types) who aren't used to such freedom in program specificiations. They want to make sure everything is "okay."

Anyway, I deposited all my checks, then went home and napped for two hours. Got up twenty minutes before salsa and drove there with Jen. We learned some new steps for the batada which is kind of like merengue. The second half of the class we did our midterm. The layout is that 5 couples dance through the whole routine and the teacher and TAs watch and look for mistakes. If you do it right, you pass and can leave. If not, you go back and try again later. She was actually pretty leaniant, I thought. Maybe a quarter of the class passed. We tried three times. The first time, Jen got one part of the arm movement wrong, and I messed up the footwork. The second time, I tripped up on "the maze" and just stopped dancing. I don't think they'd even noticed after I stopped and looked up. The third time, everything was perfect exceprt for my maze. The teacher asked me to do the maze for her, and I did so she passed us. Whew! We came back to my apartment and watched "The Last of the Mohicans" Jen didn't agree with my appraisal of it as a "Romance." Anyway, here I am, and glad my class tomorrow is at 12:15. Goodnight!