Summer, but just as busy as ever.

For the last few months of school I was continually telling myself things would slow down after one more week, or two. Then I finally realized school was not going to slow down. So I started telling myself things would slow down once I graduated. And that was what I held onto. I put off laundry, dishes, and vacuuming, holding onto the idea that once school was over I'd have time to catch up on chores, catch up on photo editing, clean my office, read, etc.

However, graduation has come and gone, and I've now recognized my latest hope isn't true. Life doesn't slow down. Period. There are always responsibilities, always surprizes and there simply aren't enough hours in every day. I expected to at least have a little bit more time, but thus far it feels like I'm just as busy as when school was in full swing. I'm working 3-4 days a week at my office job, which gives me a day or two each week. I planned on using that day to catch up on chores, editing, etc.

Thursday I spent ALL day doing laundry. I'd tried to catch up on laundry a couple times during school, but they were never sucessful attempts - instead they ended in even more dirty laundry [after being left on the couch, end of the bed or even the floor, begining stepped on, mixed with other dirty laundry, etc]. So for the last few months almost every article of clothing Jeff and I own has been dirty. When we needed clean clothes we would wash just the necessities - jeans, shirts, and undies. So Thursday I attacked laundry. I filled our living room with carefully color sorted piles and started a process of load after load into the washer and dryer, folding previous loads in between. And I managed to make it through most of our laundry. I also refolded everything in our dresser and shelf in the closet.

I thought I'd make it through laundry, and dishes, and some pictures... but I only made it through laundry. Oh well. Then Jeff and I chaperoned at single's conference this weekend - which was amazing, but more of that on another blog. ;]

Anyway I'm starting to get back into the swing of things - work, chores, picture editing, etc - with that means dealing with the fact that life flies by, no day has enough hours in it to accomplish everything on my list, and I have to deal with it, smile, and keep going.

College Graduate!

It's official. I'm a college graduate. It's crazy to be done, exciting and sad, but finally here!!

I graduate with honors - summa cum laude and with the deans award for outstanding graduate in the arts. My gpa was around 3.95 and I graduated with over 30 extra credits that don't web apply to my degree. I entered 4 years ago as a math major, spent a year and a half as an undecided major, and graduated as an art-photography major with a business minor. My photography was published 3 different semesters, I've had 3 joint exhibits and one solo exhibit. I also completed a self-portrait 365 project. I was awarded an honors undergraduate grant, completed an 85 page honors thesis, and presented my research at a research conference.

I commuted 1 hour each direction from Carson, usually four days a week, to attend classes. I worked 10-20 hours each week at my office job, and an additional number on my freelance photography. I spent evenings with my husband and managaed to keep up on most of my household responsibilities. I graduated with no student loans.

But these 'statistics' don't begin to explain my undergraduate experience.

I've grown tremendously. I've learned about my past, my weaknesses, and my strengths. I've learned to juggle multiple roles and responsibilities. I've learned to deal with stress, prioritize and to not sweat the small stuff. I learned how to be a loving and humble wife. I've become a leader and mentor while still a student and learner. I've become a technical and conceptual artist. I've recognized my desires and priorities and am learning to keep a proper outlook of life. I've learned to rely on God for my strength and to never take any of the good gifts He's given me for granted.

I'm thankful for the support of family, mentors, and peers through these last four years that have allowed me to continue striving to do my best.

Congrats to all my fellow 2010 University of Nevada, Reno graduates!!!!

The End!

After four years of school and over 800 hours commuting to Reno from Carson... I'm done!

I kept having one more thing to do, and now, suddenly, its all done, all over. All tests have been taken, papers submitted (including my 85 page thesis!), projects critiqued, and evaluations completed. The only thing left is to walk across the stage on Saturday! It feels unreal and at the same time, it hasn't really hit me. I'm not sure it will until Saturday or even next fall when I don't go back to school.

On Tuesday I arrived at school about 1pm. I was early to my last class - Book Arts, so I could finish putting away materials and printing a few final bags. No one was in the studio when I arrived, and so I sat there for a few minutes, thinking. It would only be a few hours and I knew my undergraduate studies would be completely over. And after I started, the next few hours flew by, and then it was over.

Its kind of sad. I mean, school is what I've done for the last 16 years... and despite how much I have complained about it, I'm really going to miss it. I didn't take advantage of college like I should have and I regret it. In so many classes, I did the bare minimum to get the grade and didn't try to learn and understand the material. And I often made excuses for why I couldn't give 100%. I'm going to miss my peers and mentors and the environment.

But I'm also really excited. I'm excited to kick off my photography business in full swing, catch up on editing photos for clients and my 365 project, blog more (woo!), clean and decorate my house, and just live and be!

Graduation this Saturday at the University of Nevada, Reno! Barbecue/Taco/Fajita Celebration at my house afterward! See you then! ;]

It just doesn't end!!!!

I keep telling myself "just make it to Sunday and things will calm down" "one more paper" "this weekend I can relax"

... but it doesn't happen! Somehow new things come up, or I don't realize what day things are due, or things take way longer than expected!

After I installed my exhibit and held the opening I thought things would slow down. But they didn't. This past week I had my thesis defense. It was much harder than I had anticipated. It was an hour of questions from my advisers and I wasn't nearly as prepared as I had hoped. Good news is - I passed with revisions, which means after I make a few changes to my thesis and submit it, I'm done with it! These past few days I've been working on a research paper that I put off due to my exhibit.

Today, I uninstalled my exhibit. It was very unpleasant. Today was the only day I could uninstall. Yesterday was an MFA student's opening so I couldn't clog the hall while she had people walking in and out. And tomorrow the next exhibit is being installed, so today was my only option. Unfortunately, today was also the Jazz Festival, which I didn't realize would be taking place in my exhibit hallway!

I arrived around 10am and there were litterally 50+ middle and high school students lining both sides of the hall and the entire floor. Almost all of my framed prints were hanging crooked and students were actually leaning up against a couple of them! I couldn't believe it! I know that younger students may not be as aware of their surroundings, I know I wasn't, but I was still considerate when things were hanging on the walls - I made sure not to touch them or even get close. But these students had not only knocked and bumped them sideways, but some were leaning against them! I was frustrated to say the least. First of all, I can't believe the students didn't realize what they were doing. Second, where were all the supervisors and parents and such? I walked up to the couple students leaning against my work and asked them to move. Then I loudly asked for everyone's attention and explained that they needed to stand in between the images or sit on the floor. very very frustrating.

I took my images down one by one and moved them into the other gallery (with a locking door) so I could pack them up away from the crowd. The crowd dispursed and Jaime arrived to help me patch a paint walls. There will still people filtering through the hall so we setup some chairs with tape to keep people from running into the walls. The rest of the afternoon was frustrating. The Jazz employees or volunteers kept moving our chairs in towards the walls because they said there would be big crowds soon and we needed to keep it open. We had to keep moving things around. There has been an issue with the paint the last few weeks and so two of the three exhibit walls in my gallery were painted the wrong shade of white, and so our touch up paint only made the wall worse. Jaime and I repainted the entire surface of those two walls and then on the third wall we just patch painted the scuffed areas.

Multiple times during our painting the jazz organization people came by and made a fuss. One lady came over and rudely tried to tell me I needed to stop and come back and paint later. Apparently, they had been promised the gallery space for people to stand in, but I was also told I had to take everything down today. She argued with me and was very forceful in suggestions for me to work on it later, trying to convince me the walls would get ruined later by people leaning against them and I'd have to redo it later anyways. I told her I felt she was being very hostile towards me when I was trying to work out a solution. She left. I understand their frustration of having someone in the halls when they expected them to be empty. However, I was just as surprized to find out that I was expected to not be there during that time. I was frustrated because rather than speaking to me as an adult, and having a civilized conversation, she was rude. The director of some part of UNR came over and had a civilized talk with me and we straightened things out. Four hours of painting and the walls were done, and dry enough to hang little signs that said "Do Not Touch!"

Looking Forward

As graduation approaches, there are a number of things I'm looking forward to, including:

reading books

planning dinners

catching up on laundry

doing some spring cleaning

spending time with my husband - especially in the evenings and weekends - watching movies, sushi dates, etc

sleeping

no homework

decorating our house

printing our own photos

catching up on photo editing

finally finishing the revision of my website

hanging out and building relationships with friends - I miss all of you!

taking on my commercial photograhy work

and working on my own creative photography work

painting, sewing

getting my pottery wheel and kiln working and throwing some pots and mugs!!!

volunteering my time to help our church body

spending more time in God's word

sunshine

Less than a month till Graduation!

Thesis + Exhibit = Running on Empty

This past week has been a complete whirlwind. Last thursday I spent the afternoon-early evening cutting the windows for all my mats. I ran a fee tests in scrap board before starting on mine. I made a few mistakes on the first few, but quickly got the hang of it and sliced through the rest (haha). It felt really good to cut my own mats. My professor had warned me against doing my own because of the stress it could cause, especially as I was nearing my exhibit. But since I'd finished my printing I decided I had enough time to not stress and would do it myself. Thurs night I continued to work on my thesis.

Friday I worked and took off a couple hours early to work on my thesis. I'd made a lot of progress, but also had a ways to go so a couple extra hours was great. I took a short nap when I got home and then set up Jeff's computer with our tv so I could have multiple docs open at once on a larger screen and be more efficient. It was great. I put in a solid 8+ hrs of work.

Saturday, I got up early and put in some time on my thesis before our landlord arrived to renew our lease. Then it was off to Reno. I spent the day assembling my prints and mats into frames. Framing took all day. It's a much longer process than sticking the print into the frame. You have to align the print in the matte window and adhere it to the backing. Then, carefully, I cleaned both sides of each sheet of plexiglass, and then put the plexi-mat-print-backing sandwich into the frame. It took forever because dust LOVES plexi and so no matter how well I cleaned it - more dust always appeared. Plus I had 12 frames and although I got
into a routine, it didn't speed up the process. I had forgotten about tieing the hanging wire to the frames and so that was an entire additional process after the prints were framed. Saturday night I spent more time reading and editing my thesis.

Jeff and I went to church and then I dropped him at home and I headed back up to Reno to install my exhibit. Everythingalways takes longer than expected and despite this understanding I was still frustrated at how much time it took. After I laid out the order of my images I got advice from photog friends on the hanging height- distance and starting blocking out and marking my installation. Unfortunately, during this process I discovered scuff marks all over the split wall of my exhibit. It is gallery practice and courtesy to patch and repaint the wall when you take down your work. The artist before me had done this, but since they were only on the long wall, they only redid the long wall. There had been a student group show the week before and so they must not have painted. I figured I'd paint over just the scuffs and did a small test patch to ensure it was the right paint... But it wasn't. And the second can wasn't either. I decided to stop wasting my time and took my friend's suggestion to sand the scuffs instead. After my images were hung I moved on to my lights. With ducktape and zipties I secured 7 clamp lights to the old track and positioned them to light each print. I forgot to purchase extention cords and didn't know the gallery had extras, so I left them to finish on monday. Sunday night I read through more of my thesis.

Monday I was up bright and early and was able to finish my thesis. I printed it and headed to school. Of course I forgot to turn it in (must have been due to a lack of sleep).

Monday and Tuesday I finished the final details of my exhibit and Thursday I hung a shelf and some artist cards.

Thursday's opening was really fun. Tons of people came - lots of pepole I invited (thank you thank you for coming!!) and lots of people my fellow artists had invited.

I've been running on no-to-little sleep, finally catching up with me. Tonight I went to bunko - and offered to give my friend Joleen a ride home when her sister-in-law needed to take her car home early. I didn't realize until we were getting ready to leave that I hadn't even driven to Bunko! I'd caught a ride from Ariel! (Major oops - but we were still able to give Joleen a ride to her car) It was a clear indicator that I need to get some sleep.

So I'm really looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow! It will be the first time in months I'll get to sleep past 7 or 8am.

;]

all grown up

Its weird, being so close to graduating. It feels like I've been in school my entire life. And yet in just over 4 weeks, it will come to an end. I'll be done with school.

I've been working harder than I have at any other point in my school career. These last few days have been rough, but God is so good and has given me strength when I feel like I can do no more.

Friday I worked a full day at my office job, came home, napped, and spent 7 more hours working on my thesis (from 7:30pm to 2:30am). Then it was off to bed to catch a little shut eye.

Saturday I was up at 9am and headed up to UNR to print. I'd been trying to print in the afternoon-evenings, but I kept getting kicked off the printer. I'm printing my photographs on matte roll paper - and there are only 2 of 13 or 14 printers that can do that. One is designed to print on 17" wide paper (that I am printing on) and the other goes up to 20 or 24 or something, but is much slower. I've been sticking to the one printer (Epson 4800) to stay consitent. Unfortunately there are TONS of beginning classes that have been in lab these past couple weeks. When a class is in lab - they get priority on the printers - which means I can sit down to print and 10 minutes later get kicked off. Its frustrating. So all last week I managed to only get 2 or 3 prints done. So Saturday I headed up to school and from about noon until 7 or so I printed. My friend Elizabeth came and kept me company and let me bounce ideas off of her. I managed to get 3-4 prints completed, for a grand total of 7 of 12 finished.

Monday rolled around and my routine of getting kicked off after one test print began again. I managed to get one print done by 8:30pm and headed home.

Tuesday I ran into a new problem. The lighting in the gallery my exhibit is going to be held has two walls and two tracks for track lighting. However, only one of the two tracks works. Apparently the other one hasn't worked for a few years - and the last time someone tried it sparked and almost started a fire or something. The light canisters can be pointed at either wall from the one working track; however, they only have 5 working canisters. Five lights for twelve prints isn't ideal or even really workable. The entire track system is so old that you can't buy these canisters anymore. I spent all of Tuesday afternoon working with my two photography professors to find an alternate solution. Its unprofessional that I'm having to come up with my own lighting for an exhibit in a school's gallery - but it's good experience to prepare me to troubleshoot for exhibits in the future. I was really bummed out because instead of printing I was now having to solve a problem that shouldn't have been something I needed to deal with anyways. But after some food and quiet time I got back to troubleshooting. We figured out the only option was to purchase some clamp lights and run an extension cord up the side of the wall to plug in 7 additional clamp lights. Thankfully I still had enough money left in my grant to pay for the 7 clamp lights and bulbs. A run to Home Depot and I had what I needed to rig up my own lighting system.

Today (wed) I had another full day. I spent all morning (9am-2pm) printing again. I had a few printer problems, but I finished the rest of my prints. I now have all 12 prints completed. It was a huge relief when I sleeved my final print. I still need to lay them all out next to each other and see if any of them need to be touched up, but I have 12 prints. Now I need to get the windows cut in my mat boards and then assemble each print into its frame.

The biggest thing still looming over me is my actual thesis. After working on it on Friday night, it grew to 79 pages. I have edits from multiple reviewers in multiple forms (tracked changes, text boxes, handwritten, and summary in an email) that I need to sort through and incorporate. And I still have a few more artist summaries to add, my conclusion to write, and my intro and abstract to rewrite. But I'm getting there. I'm feeling way more confident than I had.

I should also mention that a few weeks ago my photography professor informed me he was going to nominate me for a deans award. I was very honored and excited. They accepted my nomination and asked for a resume, transcript and short bio. It was a small confidence boost putting together my resume. I've already had two joint exhibitions, had my art published three different semesters, had a scientific paper accepted for publication and presentation (coming this june), recieved a grant for my honors thesis, and will be presenting my thesis research at the Nevada Undergraduate Research Conference next week. It was exciting to see how much I have accomplished.

Then this week I got exciting news! I won the 2010 College of Liberal Arts Dean's Award for Outstanding Graduate in the Arts. I'm very excited. When I transitioned from being a math major to undecided to photography one of the biggest things that loomed over me was the nagging feeling that I wasn't pursuing a "scholarly" degree. I felt that many people looked down on art degrees as though they were less worthy than other degrees like engineering. [In fact, I've had some people flat out express this view to me in conversation]. However, with a growing resume of both artistic and academic/research accomplishments - I'm proud to say I'm an artist. I'm an artist and also an honors student. I'm an artist, but I also do research and work hard in my studies. I'm an artist, but it doesn't mean I'm not as smart or hard-working as my peers. And it feels really good to be recognized as such.

I received an email yesterday from a journalism student asking if they could do their final project for their class on me (and my project). I had to read the email a couple times to believe it. Someone is interested enough in my work (from only a research abstract in the conference program) to want to learn more about it and do a presentation on it/me. Its weird! I'm not really sure how I feel about it. Its a mixture of excitement and hesitation.

I also bought graduation announcements today, and I just can't believe I'm almost done. A few more weeks of hard work and then poof! It'll all be over. And then I can catch up on everything I've pushed off to the side - like laundry and editing/posting 365 pictures.

I'm procrastinating by writing this blog rather than spending a productive 20 minutes on my thesis. But its time for bed. For once Jeff and I might get to sleep before midnight. Goodnight everyone!

Don't forget these key dates!

Exhibit begins Mon 4/12
Research Presentation at NURS Tues 4/13 ~1-3pm
Exhibit Reception Thur 4/15 - 6:30 to 8pm-ish - Be there!!!!
Thesis Defense Tues 4/20
Exhibit ends Fri 4/23