Wednesday, January 7, 2009

1/5/9 :: First Day of Uni


Today was my first day of Uni, which was exhausting to say the least.  Above is a photo of the outside of my flat, door 30, Flat 4-- which is on the top floor.  I stepped out this morning to find myself feeling quite intimidated and excited.  If you could pan around the other direction of that photo, you would find yourself staring straight at my college.  I can see into classrooms from my window.

When I got to school, I went right to registry for my orientation as a visiting student.  After filling out some forms and paying some fees, I had some time to meet the other exchange students.  There are quite a few from the US, but none in my department.  I met a girl from Traverse City who is studying costume design.  Her name is Lily, and she was quite nice.  Though, I was eager to get to my department and meet my future friends.  When I got there, I found the entire graphics department to be one large room, split into four sections-- one for each year of the program.  I was in smack in the middle with the third year kids.  They greeted me with smiles and a note on my desk that said "Kelly- Welcome :)"

The first day was a bit awkward, as all the other students were finishing up a project from last term that will be put in an exhibition in a few weeks.  Also, they had a lot to catch up with one another about, as it was their first day seeing each other after break.  The group is a very close-knit family-- they seem to do everything together.  Many of them share flats with one another.  There are probably fifteen of us in all.  

From what I gather, tutors will be popping in throughout the week, and off and on we will have various briefs, which are projects that we solely work on.  ONE PROJECT AT A TIME!  Can you believe this??  Also, no one in the group has ever really done a lot of work with the software that we all know like the back of our hands.  We seem to be polar opposites in terms of skill level.  Everything here is hand-focused.  They do a lot of screenprinting and typesetting.  In a few weeks we will be doing a litho project with an illustration student.  I am most excited to explore this new way of designing.

I went out to lunch with people from the class in the morning-- Joe and Shonagh in particular were kind to me.  It was nice to have them offering out kindness, but I still feel like a bit of an outsider, of course.  Ani will be happy to know we had coffee at The Elephant House, which is the cafe where J.K. Rowling wrote Harry Potter.  Tomorrow I will be finding out more about the first project.  All in all it was an exhausting day, concluding by getting lost in the city.  Good fun.









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