Ahh... Now I can relax!

Finals are FINALLY over! Hence, my title.

Tonight on the phone, my older brother asked me what kind of finals college students at an art school had to do... for two of my classes I DID have the usual test/research paper. Once I actually took the time to do these, they were a breeze. For my photography and darkroom classes, I had to present a 10-photo final project. Finally, for my design class, I was to design a 7-panel cd insert and the cd label.

My brother quickly came to the conclusion that art students have it easy. HA. It's a little more complicated than it sounds...

I don't even want to try and calculate the hours I was in the 10th floor darkroom the past three weeks developing and printing photos. It's so tedious. Perfection in the darkroom is not as easy as I thought it would be. For one of my photos, I probably printed 12 different copies, maybe more to get it right, so about an hour and a half at LEAST on a single image. I finished my 10 prints on Thursday afternoon, after being in the darkroom for 6 long hours. I came back after my Thursday night class to cut my mats and mount the photos. Phew... what a relief it was to have them done!

(Here are the photos)

The cd design thing... that's another story. Yes, I did procrastinate an awful lot. After the darkroom on Thursday, I hurried to my place and worked to finish it as fast as I could. My printer is not large enough to print the format my project was in, so I thought, no problem, I'll take it to Kinko's...

What a mistake.

After explaining to the man behind the counter (which is underneath a huge sign saying, "we're here to help you!!") what a rush I was in and what I needed him to help me with, he casually said, "Well, I'm a little busy, so you'll have to do this yourself on the self-serve copiers." He also explained that Kinko's can only print on 8.5X11 paper just like my own printer, and I would have to reduce my image. Why, I wonder, does a professional printing shop not have a larger-format printer? The final step in my Kinko's plan was to print a computer file onto the image. The man behind the counter argued with me for 5 minutes that I could not print text on top of an image, because after all, the background of my text is white... thus, the white would cover my image... At this point, you can understand I was getting a little fed up. I asked why white would cover the image one more time, he told me that because the background on the screen is white, it will print out that way and ruin my colorful image.

"What... you have white ink in your printers?!?" I exclaimed, pretty sarcastically. I'm sorry Mr. Kinko's man, I didn't mean it.

I gave up on the self-serve guess-and-check Kinko's and went to my class. Luckily, my teacher gave me an extension until Tuesday.

Friday morning I presented my photos, then hopped on the L to the north side of Chicago, where I went to an Aveda salon/spa. I had a scalp massage, shampoo, deep conditioning treatment, haircut, and aromatherapy hand massage... it was sooooo wonderful! (I think, if I can afford it, this may have to be an after-finals ritual.) I came back to my room, talked with Josiah for a while, and SLEPT.

Still posted on my bulletin board is my 4-week layout of the previous month, with my plans for getting finals done. Though I originally laughed hysterically when my good friend Megz told me she felt she would need a straight-jacket by the end of finals, I can almost understand that.