I guess I'll talk about school some more?
Oct. 15th, 2025 10:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
soc_puppetOkay, update time. Hmmm...
School continues apace! We're at the half-way point in the term, and so far my grades are looking good in Intro to Human Services and Social Problems. I'm optimistic about my grade in Ceramics, but I don't expect to have a good idea about it until next week; we're doing a critique of our first major project on Monday (already rescheduled twice, blergh), and I expect we'll get our grades on that after.
I've got at least a paragraph for each of my classes, but they get pretty long, so I'm cutting them individually.
In Social Problems, our supplementary class projects have moved on from "Write an essay about this documentary you watched" to "Write an essay about a current event", which is. Honestly not much better. Or any better. I think I like it less? While we had to cite two different ideas with timestamps for the documentary summary essays, for our current event journals, we have to cite two of our other class materials, be it the textbook, a lecture, or something else we had to read/watch/listen to outside of class. I think I have a slightly better handle on the second one than the first, but I still don't like it. No idea what we'll be doing for supplementary class homework for the third part of the semester. On the plus side, I got 98% on the first of the three tests, and, like Philosophy over the summer, the lowest of our three test scores will be dropped 👀 If I do well on the next test, I may not have to show up at all for finals...
Looks like I haven't updated on Ceramics over here other than the above, so to get things started: We've moved on to the wheel! For our second big project in Ceramics, we're supposed to make two sets of at least two items each, each of which must be at least 4" in one dimension, and one of which must have at least one handle. Oh, and they should be personal to us/relate to an interest/our identity/etc. And we have to make duplicates of all of them, because we should realistically expect to lose half of our work to the process in ceramics anyway? Or something? And also we should make three of any plates? In reality, right before firing, we're going to be destroying the lesser objects in class, so that'll be. Something. The initial assignment outline also included that we had to make at least one mug and at least one bowl, but the teacher relaxed the mug one to "something with a handle" and let go of the bowl restriction entirely. Of course, by this point, I'd already planned my projects around the restrictions, so I'm making:
A mug with a tentacle handle and matching saucer
A set of three bowls that stack together to look like a Pokéball
Not much to report for Intro to Human Services, except that our teacher has started introducing quizzes. She's not happy about it (she has repeatedly stated that she hates quizzes, and our grades were originally going to be based entirely on attendance and homework), but she wasn't confident we were all reading the assigned textbook chapters, so now she's testing it. It kinda bites for me, because the textbook chapters tend to be the basis for the week's non-reading homework, so I like to read the chapter relatively early, and then we're tested on it the next week, so I don't retain it as well as if I'd read it more recently. But whatever. I'm showing up to every class, and participated in two extra credit opportunities, so I should be fine.
That's about it for now. I will continue to plug away!
School continues apace! We're at the half-way point in the term, and so far my grades are looking good in Intro to Human Services and Social Problems. I'm optimistic about my grade in Ceramics, but I don't expect to have a good idea about it until next week; we're doing a critique of our first major project on Monday (already rescheduled twice, blergh), and I expect we'll get our grades on that after.
I've got at least a paragraph for each of my classes, but they get pretty long, so I'm cutting them individually.
In Social Problems, our supplementary class projects have moved on from "Write an essay about this documentary you watched" to "Write an essay about a current event", which is. Honestly not much better. Or any better. I think I like it less? While we had to cite two different ideas with timestamps for the documentary summary essays, for our current event journals, we have to cite two of our other class materials, be it the textbook, a lecture, or something else we had to read/watch/listen to outside of class. I think I have a slightly better handle on the second one than the first, but I still don't like it. No idea what we'll be doing for supplementary class homework for the third part of the semester. On the plus side, I got 98% on the first of the three tests, and, like Philosophy over the summer, the lowest of our three test scores will be dropped 👀 If I do well on the next test, I may not have to show up at all for finals...
Looks like I haven't updated on Ceramics over here other than the above, so to get things started: We've moved on to the wheel! For our second big project in Ceramics, we're supposed to make two sets of at least two items each, each of which must be at least 4" in one dimension, and one of which must have at least one handle. Oh, and they should be personal to us/relate to an interest/our identity/etc. And we have to make duplicates of all of them, because we should realistically expect to lose half of our work to the process in ceramics anyway? Or something? And also we should make three of any plates? In reality, right before firing, we're going to be destroying the lesser objects in class, so that'll be. Something. The initial assignment outline also included that we had to make at least one mug and at least one bowl, but the teacher relaxed the mug one to "something with a handle" and let go of the bowl restriction entirely. Of course, by this point, I'd already planned my projects around the restrictions, so I'm making:
A mug with a tentacle handle and matching saucer
A set of three bowls that stack together to look like a Pokéball
Not much to report for Intro to Human Services, except that our teacher has started introducing quizzes. She's not happy about it (she has repeatedly stated that she hates quizzes, and our grades were originally going to be based entirely on attendance and homework), but she wasn't confident we were all reading the assigned textbook chapters, so now she's testing it. It kinda bites for me, because the textbook chapters tend to be the basis for the week's non-reading homework, so I like to read the chapter relatively early, and then we're tested on it the next week, so I don't retain it as well as if I'd read it more recently. But whatever. I'm showing up to every class, and participated in two extra credit opportunities, so I should be fine.
That's about it for now. I will continue to plug away!
no subject
Date: 2025-10-16 07:47 am (UTC)I love the idea of your tentacle handle. :)
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Date: 2025-10-17 04:22 am (UTC)Thanks 😊 I have a great fondness for cephalopods in general, and a tentacle handle just seemed like a good fit!
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Date: 2025-10-17 08:23 am (UTC)In the studio where I was taking classes there was a woman who'd pay the fee and would literally just throw porcelain for hours. They reserved her wheel because you don't want to cross contaminate porcelain so only she and the teacher used that one.
I was doing white stone ware next whee over and I was just consistently bad at it after years of trying, and I was entirely happy hand building, playing with textures and glazing techniques, making things that were unique.
But if you take classes you have to do wheel, because the wheel is supposed to be everyone's goal. I get it. wheel is fun and you get good you can make sets of things close to identical and much faster. It's just I was stunningly bad at centering and never really got much better.
So I'm battling my unbalanced white stoneware lump and actually close to getting it somewhat close and it just flies away. Right into the beautiful nearly finished porcelain vase next to me, crushing it, contaminating it and it's wheel.
I felt like a monster. I still have no clue how it happened, but it was at this point everyone agreed I should just be allowed to hand build happily at my table making my canisters and bowls and mugs and boxes and weird ass alien vases in peace.
Every college I went to after, I would buy my clay and sign up for the free work instead of the classes and if anyone tried to hard sell me on learning to throw I'd tell them the Tragedy of the Porcelain vase and they'd back off.
no subject
Date: 2025-10-20 01:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-10-20 04:07 am (UTC)