After that morning meeting (see post below), I finally drove into the city and eventually made it to the community college campus. I needed to finish up the calendar project that I was working on for the art gallery.
Briefly stated, the art gallery calendar is an unfinished project from spring term that has been dogging me for weeks. The calendar is both a poster/flyer/mailer that the gallery director (also the head art instructor at the college) can send to interested people informing them of the various dates of the various shows. The calendar also features some works from the various artists that will be on display during the school year. I volunteered for the project because I had the most time availability and because I really needed to have something I made for my "studio practices" class go to print.
It turns out that getting artists to e-mail you print-ready samples of their work is like organizing an all cat marching band--maybe you could get the cats to line up neatly in rows, but the good Lord help you if you need them to march in unison or play instruments while they do it. That process combined with my own finding out of how to do things in InDesign, or trying to get the department chair's approval on my layout extended the project to the very end of the deadline.
I just found out today that the calendar must be sent to the printer on Thursday no matter what. After meeting with the gallery director for the fifth and final time, I made the necessary edits and sent a PDF off to the department chair for e-mail approval. I hope it passes her inspection. On the day after tomorrow, I have to return to campus in the morning and format the calendar to the printer's template. I will also cross my fingers and pray to all that is good and holy that it will return from the printer as perfect as can be.
While on campus today, before meeting with the art gallery director for the last time, I made an appointment to see the disability services coordinator. This next term will be more than unusual and I want to check in with the disability services offices to see if there is any support I can get should the unforeseen happen. Last Fall term, I had a problem finishing my classes, a problem related to the fact that I was switching counselors at the time. The best solution to making up those classes was to wait until next year and finish them up when they were next offered. I would not be enrolled officially in the classes as I had already paid for them and attended seven weeks of them before. Instead, I would sit in on this year's classes and pretend last year's didn't happen.
Speaking on a purely personal level, this is a not a problem for me. In fact, it's an ideal "do-over." However, administratively, this could present a problem or two since I am not in this term's system. My meeting with the disability service office should help me clarify what, if anything, I would need to do to protect my rights should I have problems.
After my afternoon meetings and appointment makings, I went home and watched television and surfed on the computer. I re-read my first year of blog postings and noted, with some mild regret, that my writing was much better when I was reading all of those complicated college articles and classic novels for my graduate courses. As my blogging frequency dropped, so did the clarity and creativity of my writing. Yes, there were more than a handful of awkward phrasings and absurd over-exertions in the creative vein, but it was definitely more interesting to read. I hope I can recapture some of that as I try to post much more often.