First week of classes has commenced I've also fulfilled my first of work as a GTA for the School of Mass Communications. First, I'm working as an assistant for the undergraduate-produced news show called VCU InSight. Here, I fulfill two roles. I help the students who serve as anchors and reporters shoot and edit their stories. Next week, I'll help update the website for the show. Second, I assist the new studio professor in helping the technical crew get it together - shoot in the studio, run the switcher (which is apparently dead), hook up audio, etc. Then I help edit the final package of the shows, for which I have my own private office and edit suite. Sounds a bit too perfect, or easy, when considering where I came from and the environment that we students and professors were forced to work in. The other part of my job entails teaching a Mass Comm 101 breakout session. I have 25+ students who also go to a 400 person lecture session and then meet with me once a week to go over the course and discuss issues of from their textbook and course. It's a class that meets for 50 minutes. Now I'm used to teaching courses that last FOUR HOURS. This is a breeze!
Except there's this pesky thing called homework, and I'm stuck in four academic courses...so when people use terms like "buttload" and "ass-kicking" they are, of course, referring to the amount of reading I have to do.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Saturday, August 25, 2007
My awesome website (work in progress)
Not only are we sort of "required" to have a blog for the program, we are definitely required to build our own, however minimal, functioning website to post and promote our scholarly/artistic portfolios. I've never done this before and Dreamweaver makes my brain hurt a bit - the way that math makes my brain hurt. But I'm a big girl and I will survive!
Here's mine: tell me what you think! Of course, it isn't quite finished.
http://ramsites.net/~treverk/
Here's mine: tell me what you think! Of course, it isn't quite finished.
http://ramsites.net/~treverk/
Friday, August 24, 2007
First week in MATX
Let me be honest. I moved my entire life to Richmond because of the MATX program. Regrets? NONE.
A little backstory: I'm from Detroit, MI. The motor city. Home of the Tigers, Red Wings and Pistons (though truthfully, their stadium is not in the city, but some 50 minutes north into sprawling suburban hell). I have both my BA and MA from WSU...I have been an indentured servant at WSU since before I finished my MA. I felt like they owned me. I served time as an Adjunct and production lab manager for wages so paltry I still had to have a 3rd and 4th and often 5th part time or freelance gig to simply pay my student loan and car payment.
About September of 2006 I had a meltdown. As an artist, I wasn't producing anything. I spent most of my time trying to blow off steam at the Elvis pinball machine at Jumbo's. I drank too much. I gained weight. I felt like shit. I was, in every sense of the word, trapped.
Unhappy, pissed off, knowing I'd hit the glass ceiling, or more precisely, a brick wall, I looked into schools. I accidentally found VCU's program with a simple google search. And MATX came up. Not sure if I wanted an MFA or a PhD, I applied to 4 other MFA programs and only MATX. And VCU/MATX is the only school that accepted me. But let me clarify, I wasn't just accepted the MATX, I was offered a GTA position that covers my tuition, gives me a yearly stipend and comes with university health insurance. When I read my acceptance, I started bawling. Finally, a way out. Finally, a wrecking ball came through and smashed the brick wall in front of me.
Here I am in Richmond at my desk in my office on the second floor of my charming 1880's Italinate townhouse. I'm reflecting on who I was and where I've come from in order to put into perspective how incredibly fortunate I feel to be here right now. Maybe all that time in Detroit wasn't a waste because it lead me to this place and this program and earned me the award from VCU. I have to think this way or I will feel like I wasted the last 4 years of my life on a useless MA and working at a school that treated me poorly for lousy pay. And I'm bitter about it, but that too seems to be wearing off as everyday I discover something new and wonderful about this great little city.
So my first week of classes is over and I have so much work to do...it's a bit overwhelming and I'm kind of scared. But I'm also excited about something and feel a sense of purpose that had been sorely lacking in my life for so long. I do my best work under pressure and I do my best work when I am encouraged and pushed and thrown in head first. The courses are demanding, but I'm not here to fuck around. I want to work hard. I am determined to make up for the lost years of nothingness and anger. And in that sense, I am grateful to finally be overwhelmed again.
A little backstory: I'm from Detroit, MI. The motor city. Home of the Tigers, Red Wings and Pistons (though truthfully, their stadium is not in the city, but some 50 minutes north into sprawling suburban hell). I have both my BA and MA from WSU...I have been an indentured servant at WSU since before I finished my MA. I felt like they owned me. I served time as an Adjunct and production lab manager for wages so paltry I still had to have a 3rd and 4th and often 5th part time or freelance gig to simply pay my student loan and car payment.
About September of 2006 I had a meltdown. As an artist, I wasn't producing anything. I spent most of my time trying to blow off steam at the Elvis pinball machine at Jumbo's. I drank too much. I gained weight. I felt like shit. I was, in every sense of the word, trapped.
Unhappy, pissed off, knowing I'd hit the glass ceiling, or more precisely, a brick wall, I looked into schools. I accidentally found VCU's program with a simple google search. And MATX came up. Not sure if I wanted an MFA or a PhD, I applied to 4 other MFA programs and only MATX. And VCU/MATX is the only school that accepted me. But let me clarify, I wasn't just accepted the MATX, I was offered a GTA position that covers my tuition, gives me a yearly stipend and comes with university health insurance. When I read my acceptance, I started bawling. Finally, a way out. Finally, a wrecking ball came through and smashed the brick wall in front of me.
Here I am in Richmond at my desk in my office on the second floor of my charming 1880's Italinate townhouse. I'm reflecting on who I was and where I've come from in order to put into perspective how incredibly fortunate I feel to be here right now. Maybe all that time in Detroit wasn't a waste because it lead me to this place and this program and earned me the award from VCU. I have to think this way or I will feel like I wasted the last 4 years of my life on a useless MA and working at a school that treated me poorly for lousy pay. And I'm bitter about it, but that too seems to be wearing off as everyday I discover something new and wonderful about this great little city.
So my first week of classes is over and I have so much work to do...it's a bit overwhelming and I'm kind of scared. But I'm also excited about something and feel a sense of purpose that had been sorely lacking in my life for so long. I do my best work under pressure and I do my best work when I am encouraged and pushed and thrown in head first. The courses are demanding, but I'm not here to fuck around. I want to work hard. I am determined to make up for the lost years of nothingness and anger. And in that sense, I am grateful to finally be overwhelmed again.
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