2/25/23

Hello everyone. How was your week? You cant answer so I'm just going to carry the conversation, it's okay. 

My week, thank you so much for asking, has been very off, as if something were missing from my daily routine or a normal thought process flipped to become much more convoluted. I finished constructing my vest on Tuesday, which was a great feeling. Opposed to last year's clothing I made, the stuff I'm making now is so evidently improved, which means I must be improving, which is also a great feeling. The next project is pants, and I'm very excited about how they'll turn out. I got this tan canvas fabric and decided to make some very 2000s-esque cargo pants, and I'm lining it with this really soft flannel, and I'm gonna add studs and these thick belt loops and so many pockets, I'm just feeling very in tune with my fashion education, you know? Regardless, beyond feeling academically accomplished, the rest of the week has been a rather strange feeling. I did all the same things I typically do, yet, for whatever reason, it felt significantly more strenuous. I do think the main cause is how little sleep I've been getting, the cause of which I'm not sure, but I explained it to Abby as though I have a finite amount of sleep in my body throughout the day, and I'm using more of it than usual. Thus every night I sleep, say, four hours, and continue on with my day. Each activity consumed maybe 30 minutes worth of my internally stored rest, but by the end of the day, I'd used up more than I had. Then I go to bed and get maybe five hours of sleep the next day, however, because I used more than the four hours I had the day before, I'm now in the negatives, so the five-hour sleep I got today, filled up three hours of the rest I needed to balance me out, but only two hours of additional rest to get me through the rest of the day. And it continues like this day after day, and I'm now feeling as though I'm running on such a lack of rest, that my body no longer recognized sleep as something I need, since I go all day on practically nothing and survive anyway. Does that make sense? I'm pretty sure I just explained what having bad credit is like. 

Anyway, that's, emotionally, how my week has gone. Some cool stuff of the more recent variety has happened, but it feels almost too recent to really get into right now. I will say I'm very excited to see how things go this week, I feel like there have been some major changes in the way I will be going about my life, but who am I to say whether that's positive or negative? Other than that I think things are feeling like they're going well. Nothing going badly, and though possibly, not a popular opinion, I do try to be optimistic. Beyond just enjoying my work in terms of garment construction, I've been giving a lot of mental energy into my relationship with fashion as a whole. Last year when I first really began making clothes, much of my work was very unoriginal, uninspired even, and I was really just making things for the grade, rather than a real desire to be creative. I'm not entirely sure what the switch was, but the things I'm making now are much closer to things I actually want to make. I will say I think a large contributing factor to this change is that I no longer listen to my professor's opinions nearly as much. For example, the vest we had to make was to be lined, and typically the lining of attire like that is made out of thin, lightweight material like silk. I did mine with this thick-ass, heavy canvas-type material with a really cool forest-y, trees, and deer pattern which just felt more "me" than if I had done a more simplistic lining. And that freedom of knowing my professors want me to do something a certain way, but also knowing I'm the one paying to take their classes and don't want to do it that way, has made the process of being a fashion student so much easier to swallow. I know I've talked about this on the blog before, but one of the worst things I've noticed about college, especially for art students, is how creatively draining it can all be. Spending time making a piece, whether it's a song, a shirt, a painting, or a sculpture, submitting it to your professor, and being told you did art incorrectly, is easily one of the quickest ways to kill someone's desire to be creative at all. And that's entirely what college does. College is a concept in which you are encouraged to find yourself so long as the "yourself" that you find is something moldable and can be fixed to play a role that CAPITALISM wants you to. But what I'm saying is that, so long as you semi-know what you're doing and can prove it, you can get away with being the more creative version of yourself. 

I think one of the hardest things for me to wrap my brain around coming from middle to high school and then college, was understanding how to find a solid middle ground to take the road you want to, while still making your professors and teachers happy. I was always someone that had a very particular manner in which I liked to do things. Call that autism, being a Capricorn, or being someone who had so little control over his life that he would lose his shit if something he could control wasn't going how he wanted, and that, especially in middle school, has always made me butt heads with a lot of my superiors. I, and I know many others like me, have always raised questions about why we do things the way we do, and in most educational spaces, that line of thinking is usually not encouraged. In middle school, it was very much expected that you did what you were told, and nothing else. In high school, we were given a lot more freedom, but it was freedom in a similar sense to the freedom you have in college. In most professional areas, at this point I think a lot of what we do is a matter of tradition over practicality, maybe less so in recent years after Covid we experienced a major shift in the way teachers and professors seem to approach assigning homework, but that's about it. You are to have 1/2" margins on all submitted papers, you may only submit word Docx and not PDFs, and you MUST cite at least three additional sources even if your written reflection is entirely your opinion. None of it makes sense, your ability to write and submit a well-crafted essay should not be determined by your ability to follow directions, it should be on the actual subject being created. And for years this mindset has gotten me C's, D's, and too many emails to parents to even count anymore, all because, regardless of the quality, time, or effort I was putting into the assignment, I didn't use MLA format, or turn it in exactly at 11:59 PM even though the professor isn't planning on grading it until next weekend. The same pointless arguments are made in fashion, you have to make a jacket but, without being informed, you are to understand were only using woven fabrics. That is absolutely bonkers to me. The idea that was being taught how to construct garments but we can't actually progress past what the professor had planned or our clothes are at risk of giving us an F. But, as is the topic of today's post, there are ways around it. What I've learned, and not that this is a new observation, simply one I've figured out how to make work for me, is that teachers and professors have favorites. We all know the trope of English teachers and the Football jock who can't form sentences with words over four syllables. In fashion, it's essentially the same thing, but it's all about money. There's a kid who I know took construction last year. He skipped around four out of every 5 classes, turned assignments in when he felt like it which typically meant many weeks after the due date, and ended the semester without submitting a majority of our assignments. I, in that class, turned everything in a day late at the latest, usually earlier than the due date, did extra work outside of class to give me a boost, and actually cared passionately about the work I was doing. The professor hated me. Hated the work I did, hated the fabric I used, hated when I asked questions, and loathed having to be my professor. That other kid? He got an extension, not for an assignment, but for all of the assignments, and was allowed to continue working on finishing them over the Summer. The professor loved him. The difference between us? His parents are filthy fucking rich. I know this because unfortunately I used to be pretty good friends with him, and know for a fact he and his parents have a grip on 99% of the professors at my University because of how much power their money gives them over already corrupt institutions like the American education system (cringe). So, as someone with no money, what I have begun doing is just being better. I show up to all of my classes on time, I never leave early, and I email my professors with any information they may need to prevent them from making assumptions about how I act. I raise my hand and contribute to group discussions and love pretending to be interested in their personal stories. But the most important part? I'm (somewhat) good at what I do. Take my vest for example, I did not use the correct lining, right? My professor checks in on me during class, the same professor I had last year who hated me and asks me to tell her what I'm doing. I show her my designs, tell her my plans, and give out every bit of information I can so that were on the same page. The time comes when she asks me what fabric I'm using, I tell her and show her it. "You're not supposed to use *whatever fabric it was* for lining", she tells me. "I know but look how cool the deer are", I responded smiling. This gets me through, she understands my vision enough to know I made the decision to use that fabric for a reason. But the real true nail in the fictional coffin, is I turn my vest in, and shit looks good. Mine seems to be pressed and pretty, and princess lines are straight and give beautiful shaping. Not to toot my own horn, but I promise I'm still not great, I'm slowly trying to prove myself as someone who does know what he's doing and cares to do it well, and with that, I hope to also gain respect from my peers and professors, because up until this point, it's safe to say I give off a very certain vibe that screams of someone most of my professors would not like. And while that is true, because as I've stated most teachers don't, I don't necessarily want them to know that anymore. 

Sorry, today's post was a little lackluster I'm fucking exhausted. But I do enjoy talking about school because, at the end of the day, this blog is really just meant to be a capsule for me and my processes in life so that my college friends can relate and my none college friends can know not to go to college. Regardless I hope you enjoyed it. Why the fuck do I treat this like a Youtube sign-off. 

Ily

~Christian Reid