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Busy last few days, even though things are winding down. I spent most of the weekend working on my paper for latin American Design. Saturday night, I had dinner with Nickee and we saw Mission Impossible: III. It was very unintentionally funny, actually, although it was much more enjoyable than Mission Impossible: II. The only thing was that it had a lot more Friends moments in it than I would have preferred. I like my uberaction films unadultrated with housewarming parties. Nickee is going to Europe for a few weeks next month, so she's very excited/scared right now. I gave her what little advice I knew about backpacking through Europe.

Finished writing my paper Sunday and made final revisions and citations to it yesterday before turning it in at noon. I wasn't thrilled with how it turned out. I'm used to writing 5 page papers, and 12 pages is a lot- I dont think I kept it as coherant as it could have been, but today when I checked my final grade for that class, I saw the professor had given me an A for the semester. So happy surprise there. I dropped by studio as I was in the building, and realized that we had our exit interviews set for that day.

I noted my time, went home, and laid out my semester portfolio of work, doccumentation of what we did that semester. It's our last studio assignment. After a few hours of that, I went back to school for my exit interview, slotted for 15 minutes. S---- hauled out a flow chart of the steps were supposed to follow from conception through final presentation/materials and went over how I did on it. He said I was the best writer in the class, one of the strongest students, and that the ideas and concepts were grea. He said I was professional, hardworking, self motivated, and a bunch of other nice things. The problem area, he said, was in the final stage, taking the idea that final step with the clearest expresssion of it in the design, in the presentation, and in the graphic representation of the idea. All fair criticism. I didn't tell him that the reason I didn't make that last hurdle was my heart wasn't in the last two weeks of work. The project was pretty much dead to me at that point. In terms of a grade, he said I was betwen an A and a B, so I'm pretty much getting a B+. But I think I've earned it.

This is very bad, and egotistical of me. I'm going to spend the a lot of my professional life defending, and selling projects that I feel are subpar, and I'm going to need to come to terms with doing high quality, representitive work on bad projects. If I only marginally liked my pool, how am I going to feel about working on somebody else's medicore project. Maybe it stemmed from personal dissapointment.

This is the one chance I will ever have in my life to go completely wild with design, to push the limits of even marginal possiblity in terms of material, form, and budget. My pool is about as wild and imaginative as a dead pidgeon. Words cannot describe how frustrated I feel with myself and the semester. Partially directed towards S---- for his "guidance", but mostly towards myself for my weakness. What happened to the crack? It was filled in and buried under a steaming pile of mediocrity.

Anyway, after that, I biked back home and finished my doccumentation and printed it out and cut it before going into work at the library where I studied for my structures exam. Got to leave an hour early, so I spent it in an impromtu study group up in studio. After I got home I ate some leftover pizza for dinner. Ben came home, sat down across from me, and said " I want some candy." I realized I was dying for candy. So we hopped into the minivan and made a late ngirun to Safeway for twizzlers, milk duds, gummy bears, recees peanut butter cups, etc. Then Ian joined us and we talked for awhile.

This morning I took my doccumentation to be bound at Alphagraphics. Came back to school a few hours before our final and dropped it off, then studied, chatted, meditated, and relaxed. After the disasterous mideterm (more than half the class failed it), we were a bit neverous. Needlessly so, though. Far easier and shorter than the last one. In conferring with classmates, I think I got an A on it, which would be great for my GPA. So feeling good about that.

And... I'm done. With the semester. No finals to take, no more projects to do. I'm sitting here alone at the library working my last shift, probably forever, typing a blog and IMing family and friends.

The whirlwind keeps blowing, however. Tonight I have to do an emergency load of clothes and finish packing all my gear for a 9 am plane flight to Utah tomorrow morning for a few days of camping and relaxing.