Ah, it is yet again time for the first impressions post: what do I think the next five months will have in store for me?
It's the first day of semester two, if you hadn't already conjectured enough. Is that the proper usage? Well, I don't care. I've decided I am no longer bound by the rules of these things you call "real words". I am a creative writer! I can do whatever I want!
Which brings me to my first class of the day, creative writing. I was going to say how the teacher seems like a teacher who might get mad a lot, but if you do your work, she'd be alright. But then I realized, that's basically the description of every single teacher I've ever known. It didn't help that the first words I heard her say today was "you don't go back there, ever!" when a student went behind her desk to get a chair, since our the twenty or so desks were no match for our thirty or so students.
On the board was our first writing assignment — are you ready for it? — "if you could be any animal, what animal would you be?".
Oh, come on.
I am taking the course name literally, and I'm going to be as creative and outlandish as I possibly can be. I won't spoil my answer for you, as I'm planning on typing it up tomorrow. But let me tell you, this is all gem stuff, this is.
The teacher said that we'd be reading for twenty minutes every day, which I found totally awesome. I have a list of books I've heard about and that sounded cool filed away, and I intend to read them one day. It looks like that time has come. She said she'd let us bring in other books for this week until we got the actual ones we'd be studying or whatever, so I figured I'd bring the Eric Clapton biography I just started reading. But ah, then she says "just no books with graphic scenes or swearing". And with that perfect comedic timing I have, the little voice in my head said, "oh fuck".
Then came Photography.
Hmm. I didn't capitalize "creative writing", but I did "Photography". That's something I've always struggled with, should course names be capitalized? English and French, obviously yes, but then when I only capitalize those two, math and science just seemed so dwarfed by them, you know? I think I'm going to stick with capitalization. And there you have it: the official word.
Photography is quite a predicament for me. You see, I'm technically not supposed to be in the class because I didn't take grade 11 Photography. Nor did I take grade 10 Photography. Nor did I even take any form of Visual Arts in my four and a half years of high school. So, what do I know about contrast? Depth of field? Film?
Unfortunately, one of the first things the teacher says is, "well, you've all taken grade 11 Photography, so we aren't going to focus on the basics, developing film, and all that stuff". Oh… great.
I've done a bit of delving into photography on my own, so I do know a bit about shutter speed and stuff. But I've never actually used a real non-digital camera before! This is one of those teachers who likes to ask everyone in the class questions, and not just those with their hands up. Which for me, is probably good, because I usually know the answer, but just don't like to put up my hand. It's quite a hole I've dug myself into, because while I would sometimes like to put up my hand — especially whence I received shiny little star tokens for doing so, as in grade 8 English, but even that, in all their sticky gloriness, did not encourage me to reach the full fifty or whatever target number of participation tokens — I feel if I suddenly just started putting up my hand, it would be weird, because I've never done it as long as I've been in school.
But where was I? The teacher is asking about controlling the light with your camera. Aperture. Shutter speed. Damn it, all mine were taken! He approaches me and asks if I know. "Umm… ISO?".
I've grown savvy to the ways of teachers. Some answer that at least has a basis in what they are talking about (in this case, anything within the realm of photography would suffice) will get you off the hook, because at least I made an effort. "Well, that controls the sensitivity to light, but we can talk about that if you want. Do you want to talk about ISO?" "Umm… suuure…"
And look at that, I'll always remember that now! Before, I always just saw the ISO button as the graininess buttons, that made it really clear but really dark, or really noisy but really light, but now I know it controls the light sensitivity. Wow, could it be? Making mistakes helps you learn? But no! Jenny never makes mistakes! Not in public!
Later on in class, the teacher was asking about bracketing, and what was it? A-ha, I know this! Exposure bracketing! You have one picture taken at x exposure, then you take one that's one exposure below and one above! Got it! But the student he asked doesn't know what he's talking about. "Who did you have for Photography last year?" "I've never taken Photography" "…then what are you doing here?"
Oh… shit. "Well, who here has not taken Photography before?" I put up my hand.
Actually, this is a boring story. I don't need to go into that much detail. Anyway, I luckily know some other people in the class and they offered to help me. Also while we were working on filling out a diagram of camera parts as a refresher (or an introduction, for some of us), the teacher commented that only a handful of other people had been working on it, including myself, who hasn't even taking Photography. So I'm sure my studiousness has helped out and I think the teacher probably realizes that I need not be kicked out, and I will actually do what I need to do.
Then came Yearbook, which is same old Yearbook, continuation of last semester, and need not be discussed.
Finally we have Communications, which is conveniently located in the same Yearbook classroom and taught by the same teacher. Especially conveniently, considering the thirty-eight people in the class and the seventeen computers, which we were told are "first come, first serve". So I've got a leg up on everyone else every other day, when I'll already be in the classroom from last class.
It's actually a grade 11/12 split for Communications, with I being on of the eight or so people in the grade 12 class. The teacher took us aside after discussing the grade 11 course with the entire class and told us what our options were. Basically, we have to come up with a proposal of what type of projects we want to be working on, which will incorporate one or more of the topics he gave us: Flash animation, website design, video production and post-production, and music.
I'm not big on Flash, and in fact, have grown to hate it, and grown to groan whenever I see a website using Flash (damn, I'm on a roll today!). Website design is boring. I mean, to do in a class. It's not a challenge to me, and therefore have no reason to waste five days making a website that it supposed to take me half a semester to make. Of course, I could propose my movie website, which involves PHP and MySQL and whatnot, but then that's more programming than graphic design and not within the scope of this class.
Video production sounded quite appealing. Of course, he seems to think you require an entire class of students to write a script, film a movie, and edit it, and recommended we do that as a group rather than individuals. Helllls no. If I'm making a movie, I'm making my movie, not some bullshit thing the rest of the group wants to make. Just give me some competent actors and I'll do the rest.
But then, music. I'd already fiddled around with the Garage Band program on the Macs whilst I was supposed to be doing something else during Yearbook, so I know a bit about how it works. I actually prefer Guitar Pro (I've learned I prefer most programs to their Mac counterparts, as I've found the Mac programs as much too simple, eg. iMovie to Adobe Premiere, though technically Adobe Premiere isn't Windows only, you know what I mean, right?), but he started saying "well, I don't know if any of you are musicians… get microphones… from the music department… private recording studio…"
Umm… what?! Hellllls yes! But again "well, I don't know if you guys all want to work together as a band or what…". Come on! I'm a drummer and guitarist and keyboardist and harmonicaist! Bass players, come on, I can do without those. But okay, okay, I do probably need a singer.
Oh, I made some good burn on bass players today. My brother was saying something about how Roger Taylor never even wanted to be in Queen in the first place and I was all "what!? WHY!?" and then was like "oh wait, he's a bass player, right? Cha, that's why".
Anyway, I guess I'll probably do a short film and do the music for it as well, which he suggested as one way to make the projects overlap. I was about to say how wonderful this was going to be, but then realized it will surely turn out to be a big hassle and just completely terrible in general if I believe so.
In keeping with my pessimism, I'm not going to say my opinions on how I believe this semester will go. I mean, my classes seem alright, but knowing that, and knowing that way back in September, looking at my second semester schedule and realizing it was the easiest, funnest semester ever to end off my high school experience, it should all turn out to be hell.