2003-09-09 - 8:58 pm
Today was emotionally and physically draining. Right now I've finally found the time to rest and calm myself. I'm shivering from unexpected cold and my head hurts but I feel like I should document today's happenings for mental clarity.
I woke up this morning at 5am, the Midol I had taken before going to bed has worn off and my cramps woke me up. I couldn't get back to sleep and my stomach hurt so badly that all I could do was lay there with my heating pad and take it. I watched one episode of Saved By the Bell and most of a Christian Slater romantic drama ("Bed of Roses"), sipping tea and barely able to get dressed. It was horrible.
(See, what's really stupid is that even though I'm on the Pill, my cramps still get bad depending on the month. I hate the fact that even when I manually pump hormones into my body, my symptoms are still irratic. At least the worst of it is over now. )
I went to class, drinking my second and third cups of tea, and was able to contain my pain long enough to take indepth notes during a two hour demo and lecture of warping and threading the loom. It was a long but interesting process, especially seeing it step-by-step. It's very complicated and time-intensive but it's the kind of stuff that I enjoy—repitition and little details.
When it was our turn to start warping our own threads, I positioned myself at one of the warping boards in the back of the studio and after a bit of a slow start, I managed to get myself in a rhythm.
(Warping the thread is just a way to keep the threads organised and untangled so threading the warp through the loom is a lot easier.)
Unfortunately, I forgot one crucial step and managed to fuck up two hours of manual work. Frustrated and on the verge of tears, I went down to the Bookstore and bought more sein twine to start the entire process all over again. While everyone else in my class had already started threading their looms, I was starting from the beginning.
Completely unimpressed with how long it took me to warp threads on the warping board, I decided to set up on one of the warping mills in the hallway. Warping mills speed up the warping process, while instead of winding the thread around stationary pegs like in the warping board, you spin the thread around the mill which cuts your labour time in half.
Anyway, while I was working, one of the strings I was using to keep my bundles of threads together kept breaking. I sat myself down on the floor, placed my head in my hands and tried to breathe. Wednesday came over and asked if I was okay and I immediately started to cry. A combination of exhaustion, hormones, hunger and stress overflowed from my body. My instructor saw that I was upset and both her and Wednesday sat with me on the floor, giving me chocolate for my nerves and talking me out of a fit. I swear, it felt like junior high school all over again.
I've been trying to figure out how to handle my wheel-throwing class, with all the extra work required in and outside of class and trying to manage it with my other intense studio classes. The only time I had left to do the rest of my ceramics assignment due for Thursday was tonight and there was no way that I would be able to stay and do good work. Tomorrow I'm going on a huge field trip and I was scheduled to work 6-9pm that same evening. I guess I started thinking about it so much that I pitched myself into a stressed out panic. Christ, and it's only the second week of school!
My instructor helped a lot and told me the things that I already knew but had a hard time hearing. She said that school should feel like it did in first year, I should be excited and happy to be there. If I'm this distraught, stressed and upset already and it's only 2 weeks in, I'm doing something wrong. And she's right, I am doing something wrong if I had a breakdown in school—in public!
Talking it over with Wednesday I decided that I didn't need to drop any shifts at work but, instead, I need to drop wheel-throwing. That class is too demanding, especially for someone who isn't planning on majoring in it or taking it that seriously. And it isn't worth my emotional health or my parents' money if I get halfway through the course and have a complete breakdown and consequently fail the class. Instead, I'm backing out early while I still can, before I put anymore effort into it.
After deciding that I felt so much lighter. I will be taking three studio classes and one liberal studies class, giving me Thursday completely off to catch up on work. I will make up for my missed elective class in the Spring semester, when I have time and energy to put into it. I might actually start having fun in class now. Heh.
And once that whole fiasco was overwith, I sat with most of my department majors for a potluck dinner, chatting with older students and instructors. I adore the Fibre department so much because there is such a feeling of community and family all throughout it. And this year, I'll be completely emmersed in it.
Anyway, that was my day. Now it's time to draw pictures of wings.
