My Final Semester Begins!

How is it that the final semester of my master's program is here? When did that happen? OMG! I feel like I've lived through lifetimes and yet have just barely started. Time has stretched and shrunk and folded in upon itself all in a matter of two years. Two years. I've slipped around and through the program. It has been wild.

Now I'm starting my final project and I want to blog about it. I want to link my thoughts about my project to the medium itself and see where it goes. I don't know what to expect with my project. I'm taking Kierkegaard's philosophical leap of faith, leaving rationality behind and stepping into the Unknown, that part of me that I know exists but that I've ignored because it scares me so.

Fall 2006, I took N503 Digital Media Application Design Processes with Richard Edwards as the professor. I did not want to take that class because traditionally it had been taught using Flash as the application and it was the traditional that I wanted to learn, but Rich decided to take it in a different direction. The direction he took it appeared to be totally useless for me.

Ultimately, N503 ended up being the one class that I value the very most from all my studies. I figured anyone who can bring Niestzche into a New Media classroom and discuss philosophy and how it relates to New Media is someone worth taking a class from. On top of that, Rich played to everyone's strengths, encouraging the class members to create a project that had value to them.

I was able to push my knowledge of Photoshop, my personal application of choice. My final project was thrilling for me...so much so that the still image of it is currently the header of this blog (the project itself was a .mov shown on the Wall...a huge screen on the UITS side of the building). I also printed it so that it fit within the framework of a door and it has hung in a gallery. Wow!

(I wish that Google Video didn't chunk my video. It runs much more smoothly than this.)

Last semester was my Semester-From-Hell (SFH). So much happened to me during that semester that I had to make choices about what I could do and think about and what I had to set aside. I set aside thoughts of my final project.

Once the SFH was over, I turned my thoughts to my final project. I had wanted to do something with art and technology but I knew it was too late to really start on something as extensive as that so I settled on a not-for-profit branding project. It was "safe." It was something I could do and it fell within the parameters of the program's expectations. But I felt I had done myself a disservice by settling for something easy. I just didn't know what else to do. Then I had to find a mentor.

My first choice was Rich, though I had two other instructors as possibilities just in case Rich was booked for the semester. I was thrilled when Rich agreed to work with me. The way I saw it was even if branding wasn't Rich's forte (one of the other instructors I had emailed is excellent at branding), he is a conceptualizer. I knew that he would get me to think differently about what I was doing. He would expand my perspective and pop me out of whatever narrow box I was rummaging around in.

When I sat in his office at our first meeting, he looked at me and said, "I don't get it, Dezra. I don't see this as something you would be doing. This isn't YOU."

I tried to explain that I had no time to think about my project during the SFH and this was all I could come up with. But Rich wouldn't hear me...THANK GOODNESS! He said, "You should be doing something with art, perhaps with your camera and photography."

I just didn't know what!

But his parting words were, "Dezra, if you decide you want to design a matchbox cover, I can turn that into a project for you. I want you to think about what you're doing and get back with me."

So I am now leaping into the unknown, working with Camera Raw because that is what is grabbing me, not knowing where I'm going with it but trusting the process...because I trust Rich. I trust that he will be able to direct me and I trust that I will be able to seize the opportunities. And I trust my gut. I don't know where it's taking me, but I'm in for a ride. And I'm thrilled.