For this semester of classes, I did not want a repeat of last semester, where I felt physically ill from the workload, which i lay plainly and gleefully at the feet of CS 142, an intro to programming course of 4 credits, but actually took over 20 hours of my week. But my hopes and wishes were dashed at the first class in which the professor announced that the workload would be the same as that despised class. But I get to develop my own web site, from idea to code to site. I am actually really excited. And by accidentally taking it in conjunction with a HTML/CSS class (I thought it was writing for the web, cause that is what the name was), i will have enough knowledge to strike out on my own and widen the unending horizons of the virtual frontier.
My drawing class, however seems just as difficult, if not more so, as i spent the 3 hours in class debating the meanings of words, truth and the meaning of art until I was about to collapse and beyond that. He is a strange man, picky, harsh but he is dedicated not only to making art but learning about the philosophy and meanings of and inside art. And all of this thinking, debating caused me to volunteer to sign my name in blood if that is what it took to learn the meaning of art, despite the responsibility of that knowledge. And strangely, it gives me comfort, because if the professor actually did ask for my signature one day, I would give it to him, and everything else he is asking us to sacrifice(such as ballpoint pens and twenty-five dollars for a compasses) seems meaningless. And it is meaningless beside the fact of becoming a person who has mastered art. I do not want to be a person who makes work that is nice or pretty, I want to make things that cause people to be filled with wonder, that cause them to think. I want to change the world with my art, and so resenting these small sacrifices is petty.And I would have never discovered this without going to such extremes.
You may think that signing is blood is weird and somewhat ominous or evil. Perhaps, but it was only a symbol of how far that we were going to go to learn. I believe he just wanted to weed out people who were not dedicated, as he spent the time not arguing with the students, telling us that he was a mean, crotchety, terrible old professor. (And the whole time I was wondering, does he still get paid if no one goes to his classes? Cause that would make sense)