< / First Year at CSM >

Today was my final day of first year at Central St Martins.

I can hear music blasting from every floor of the student halls. Drunks are occupying on every corner. I must be the only person not out celebrating.

"Ceeeeeeelebrate good times, come on!"

I am in my very stuffy dorm room watching bad movies and fucking up my healthy diet by eating some ice cream. My flat mates are out. I have the whole place to myself. It's lonely and rather lovely. I should watch a scary movie....

"Are you still my sunshine?"

So you probably want to know how my last day went. Well.... hm. My crit was, um, uneventful and confusing. Evil Tutor was there and as per usual he gave me NO FEEDBACK. My crit was literally three minutes long. I have no idea what he thought, or what my grade will be. Big surprise, right?

Just as a point of interest, my best London friend presented immediately after I did... She walked up to the tutor as I took my model into the bathroom to de-latex her. About 5 minutes later my model, cleaned and dressed, walked back into the room to gather her stuff, and my friend was still discussing her work with Evil Tutor. I walked my model down to the ground floor and we hugged and said goodbye and I walked all the way back up to the room where we were presenting. All in all, I was out of the room for a total of about ten minutes and when I got back my friend was STILL getting in depth feedback from Evil Tutor.

See, this is how he operates. If he loves you or hates you, he gives you TONS of feedback. If he thinks you are a lost cause or doesn't understand your work at all, he more or less ignores you completely. I am always ignored. Always have been. And not because he doesn't understand, but I can tell that he feels I'm a lost cause.

Frankly, I don't give a damn anymore. Whether or not I get kicked out, I never have to deal with that useless little fucker again.

"What is love, baby don't hurt me...." (There is some asshole on the street singing along loudly and catcalling all the cute girls that walk by. He hasn't left which means no one has fallen for his line yet.)

Oh and another point of interest- I saw my grade for the denim project today. My lowest grade yet! 28. GO ME! *roll eyes*

I guess in the end it really doesn't matter because my dress was very well received by most of the class and my model looked fabulous in it. It's only the second latex garment I've ever made. It was a laborious and tiring way to do it, but it came out looking precisely like my drawing (except for a few fitting issues that I will go fix in a little while).

Observe, readers:

So, what do you think?


I would like to end this entry with some grand, eloquent words about what I have learned from CSM. But I have no words like that at my disposal at the moment. My brain power is limited to romcoms and chocolate this evening. So instead I end this, the last day of first year (and quite possibly my last day at CSM ever) with these wise, learned words of wisdomness:

Sleep is a wonderful thing. Good night.

Looking Back

Rereading my old posts this evening I have noticed a few things. First, I think it is safe to safe that I have had a really tough year. I wanted London to be an exciting adventure, and instead it has been an absolute trial. But the second thing I noticed is how I have changed so much since I moved here nine months ago.

In my reading I ran across this entry, entitled I Hope Nostalgia Makes This All Seem Better dated 18 November of last year. I talked about hoping that I would look back on that first term when I faced my fear of failing and think about it as a good ol' learning experience. Turns out that the learning experience I would look back on would be an entire year of consistent failing and fighting and picking myself up over and over again. I had no idea what was coming for me.

I had no idea that I would learn to accept failure and get over it quickly. I had no idea I was capable of being smacked down so many times and getting back up again. I had no idea what hard work really was in fact.

I had no idea that the hard work would not pay off. I had no idea that the school would be run by rule-enforcing monkeys who see in black and white. I had no idea that CSM would in fact turn out to be a fantastic school for students who already know exactly how to do what CSM wants. I had no idea that I would learn so much DESPITE CSM and not BECAUSE of it. The girl who wrote that entry would never have guesed that she would be so fed up with the bullshit at CSM that she would secretly be glad they were throwing here out so she could pursue other interests.

I had no idea that I would ever be able to get an internship. And NEVER would I have guessed that I would have the presence of mind to choose to stay in London and seek out opportunities instead of going back to the comfort of my boyfriend. The girl that wrote that on the 18th of November had no idea about anything.

And yet despite all of it, I still struggle with many of the same things I always have. The long distance relationship is still incredibly difficult for me. That has not gotten any easier- in fact it has gotten more difficult the longer I stay here. I still face the same hurdles when I get stressed out. I still struggle with feeling insignificant and untalented when faced with the talented people I study with. I am still prone to fits of utter hopelessness and despair when faced with an impossible situation, and I still find myself being unreasonably furious at The Boy when he isn't there to give me a hug and calm me down. I still find that although I am MUCH better at taking criticism, I do not have a sense of confidence within myself that will ever match the strength of complimentary words from others.

It if for all these reasons that I know I am not ready to leave Europe. I am not the person I want to be when I return home. I am far from it. But someday maybe I will get to look back on this year and find that nostalgia will allow me to see the value in the experience.

It wasn't a total waste.

So Bad, So Good

The Bad: Today I blew up at some of my friends for trying to help me in ways that weren't helpful. I felt so bad afterward, and made it all better. No hard feelings.

The Good: Designer Mentor girl asked me to style a photo shoot in her stead with one of my favorite photographers next month while she's away on business.

On Dealing With These Next Few Months

I have found a strange place of calm about my rather impossible situation with the school. I am realizing that no amount of work is going to save me at this point, and no one inside the school system is going to help me. I think it comes down to the fact that they don't actually want me to succeed.

There is something political and money-related going on behind the scenes at CSM. We are all aware of it, but of course no one in the school is going to talk about it. They let too many people in to our program, and then put someone who is the head of a much bigger program and hates what we do as the head tutor for first year. A lot of students in my program feel that we have been forgotten, like we're an afterthought. It should be noted that almost a third of the class is failing. CSM has also sold their amazing arty buildings and will be moving to a new complex in King's Cross area in two years. In this new building the fashion programs will lose almost 25% of their space (a bad move for a school that is known for its fashion, don't you think?). So it makes sense that any student who is a little behind on the learning curve is immediately being failed out. They are trying to slim down the student body. The won't admit to it of course, because accepting students into the school only to kick them out a year later isn't legal. There is something going on, but the administration is talking around it.

So I've come to a place of calm resignation. I can only do what I can do. I will do the projects to the best of my ability, but I have no plans on redoing everything in the portfolio. Evil Tutor will hate it no matter what I do so I might as well focus on the more important projects like the retrieval project and our current assignment. I figure I'm screwed either way so there's no harm in making sure I get lots of sleep and watch the occasional movie. I can't be bothered to push myself past a certain point. That is not to say I am not working very hard on my projects, but some of the feeling of panic is gone (for the time being), and resignation has taken its place.

I can't be bothered to work harder than I want to right now. I am well aware that the school wants me out, and unless a miracle occurs, no amount of work will change that. So I'm going to work today, watch some battlestar galactica before bed, and then go to my internship interview tomorrow and see if that doesn't help clarify my future some.

I've never been one to go about things the normal way, so maybe this is just another chance for me to carve my own path. Doing things your own way is never easy, and I will probably bitch and complain about it every step of the way, but maybe someday I'll look back and think, "wow, CSM was such a mistake. But it got me to move to Europe and it helped me think outside the box. And here I am with my own fashion line, and everything is going well."

Who knows, right?

A Visual Overview

I have a portfolio due on Wednesday, and so I've had to suck it up and take photos of all the work I've been dreading looking at. Going back over my work I can see now how poor the quality of work really is, but I can't quite figure out how to make it better. I can see why I failed. And failed. And failed. And failed. I found that staring at my work en mass was incredibly depressing and as a result I have barely done any work on my portfolio. I still don't know what the hell I'm going to put in there.

But I have had to take a few photos of my garments. Since I have them, I might as well share. More are forthcoming.


The Shirt Project: I chose to design with Vivienne Westwood in mind, drawing inspiration from the 90's attitude of apathy, and layered look of eastern European nomadic tribes.

The White Project: We could use only white felt or cotton to make our garment. While I HATED the other two pieces I made, the amount of time and effort I put into delicately shredding and hand-gathering this felt top stopped me from throwing it out like the rest of the project. Pared with black leggings, a pretty blonde, and a brick wall, it doesn't look too bad, I suppose.







The Accessory Project: The goal of this project was to try our hands at various printing techniques. I tried as many as I could at the time, but opted for a simple, elegant velvet devore of two bird wings.





The Retrieval Project: This was the "Congratulations you failed!" project that I was forced to do at the same time as all my other work last term. As a result of the time pressure, the garment was thrown together in one day, and has nothing fancy or insane on it. Except for the fact that the red sleeves are in fact long enough to touch the ground. It was inspired by deep sea creatures and by the vintage diving helmets.





The Metamorphosis Project: This was the team project that went to hell. I ADORED working with my team mate. She and I want to work together again. We started our project by sketching things at the Darwin exhibition, and focused on the ideas evolution, natural selection, and protection. We ended up designing two clashing prints- hers was a blocky, graphic print in two tones that felt like a tribal print of muscle fibers and cells. Mine was a print of black hair on a skin-toned fabric used to cover an exoskeleton that was to be worn over her muscle dress. It wasn't meant to be beautiful or wearable, just interesting and conceptual.
(Please pardon the shitty photo, we had to take it indoors in a poorly lit hallway due to rain.)




Ok, that's it for now.

Heh

"Sometimes I look at you, and all the work you do, and how stressed you are, and I am so glad I decided NOT to go into fashion design."

That is what one of my flat mates said to me this morning.

Three Projects Down, One to go....

Photos of the hair project will be forthcoming. We have to organize our model and I need to repair a few things on my piece. It was a depressing FAIL in my mind because it didn't come together the way I wanted. But my partner and I got on well, want to work together again, and we both felt that our overall concept was strong, so I am cautiously optimistic about our marks... (they seem to be taking longer and longer to get them back to us these days.)

No word still on the grades for our Congratulations-You-Failed project. Very nervous about that one.

I'm currently working on my fourth project this term- an accessory. I've decided to keep the design of this piece very simple so I can focus on experimenting with print techniques. I designed and made my screen today and I will start experimenting with various dying/printing/chemical treatments like devore, discharge, flocking, and good ol' screen printing.

The picture below is part of one of the three prints I am going to use on the project. All the black feathery bits will be burned out and transparent, while the white will be solid. Underneath this print will be another smaller geometric print full of color and texture that will be visible through the burned out black sections.

The wing is about 55cm long, and it will be repeated on the fabric a few times. Let's hope this time I plan my time better, work harder, and choose a more realistic end goal so I can actually complete this project with a feeling akin to mild accomplishment.

I can't wait for break.
Counting.
The.
Days.

He Came, He Saw, He Went Home. Or: I Am Ready For A Break

The Boy came to visit me for a weekend. It was all the time he could spare, and his timing was excellent, since this was the first weekend I've had free since... well.... god, since this term began. (Point of interest: I looked back and realized that except for an occasional evening where I was too exhausted to work anymore, I have not had a day off from my rather extreme homework situation since early February.)

So The Boy came to visit.

And it was good.

I haven't seen him in such a long time, and we have had some extreme highs and extreme lows in the last six weeks that we needed to deal with in person. I've processed every emotion I can possible think of in that time, from contemplating marriage to contemplating murder. But he is not moldering in a ditch somewhere, and there is no hideous square cut monstrosity on my left hand, so we worked things out in a satisfactory manner it seems.

Mostly we spent our two and a half days talking those problems through, wandering around London hand in hand, snuggling on my TINY bed and in dark bars, and having incredible sex at every opportunity.

But now he is on a big jet plane heading back to San Francisco, and I am unsuccessfully willing this cup of coffee to inspire my new design project.

I have purchased my tickets to go home over my break. But instead of spending my entire vacation in SF, The Boy and I are going to fly back to London together for a week of fun before I start classes again. I think it will be a nice transition from vacation in SF to vacation in London, with my favorite person at my side.

In other news, school has been hellish. I nearly broke down into tears twice in two days last week. And if you know me at all you know that it takes a LOT of stress and an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness before I get that close to crying in public. I get angry, I get sardonic, I get mean, I get furious... But to feel so powerless and scared that I could barely hold back tears? That's impressive.

I cannot stress how ready I am for this term to be over. Over over over. And then some Over with a side order of Completed garnished with a sprinkling of Done.

Shirt Project Results

It seems the powers that be saw fit to grant me a passing grade for my last project.

40 is a passing grade, and I received a 48. That grade was broken into the following categories: 60 for the actual garment. 40 for research. 45 for design development. 45 for illustrations.

Very few people did well in the research category. The tutor hated our research sketchbooks overall. So a 40 isn't so bad I suppose.

I think I should be happy, or proud of myself. But they waited too long to give us our grades, and I really had been hoping for a more... encouraging mark to help me get through the next couple of days as I finish this massive print project.

Ah well.
At least I didn't fail.
For once.
FINALLY.

Empty

The flat is empty.

Tumbleweeds are rolling down my windy hallway.

A lone banjo plays a few dramatic notes. (Actually, it's Gary Numan you're hearing, but let's just pretend shall we?)

I draw my... well, I'm trying to draw a new collection actually. Utterly lost in the feverish haze I've been stuck in the last two days. But I propped up on good strong drugs, and hoping that when my flatmates return they will come bearing Ben and Jerry's. Healthy? No. Tasty? Oh my yes.

When I leave my room, and Mr Numan's musical repertoire can no longer be heard, the only sound breaking the complete silence is my oh-so-sexy coughing and hacking. *snifl *kaffkaff *groan

I am considering making a dress out of hair. Not in a creepy way, so much as a Hedwig/fabulous way. But much bigger. And couture-ish. I am not sure if this is an unwise and incredibly difficult route to go down. So I might reconsider, given my time restraints. But how fabulous would it be to have a hairstyle that becomes your dress? I know a few drag queens back in SF who would give their left fake breast to have something like that. And if I made matching shoes... They'd have to cross their legs and stay seated for a while. (Oh and I am actually working a way to incorporate magnificent fake lashes into the dress too. Down boy. Down.)

Still no news on the marks for the Westwood-ish shirt. We are all very irritated about the two week wait. Nothing to calm a stressed student down like having no idea how they are doing on their work, eh?

Now, back to work. Will keep you posted on all fronts.

Sick

Party at my flat last night- TOTAL DISASTER.

Well it was for me at least, as I spent the whole evening throwing up and sobbing into a towel for no real reason.

I've never been drunk enough to throw up or not remember things. And I didn't have too much to drink, either. I guess something just didn't agree with me.

After my VERY caring room mates sat with me and rubbed my back while I threw up the entire contents of my body (I swear, if I vomited up a lung or my spleen I wouldn't be surprised) they managed to put me to bed. I woke at 6am and thought I was at my boyfriend's house for some reason. I turned expecting him to be there to hold me and warm me up, and felt my heart sink into my stomach when I realized where I was.

Got up, had some tea, sat around in the messy party remains in the kitchen eating slices of cheese and toast until I got too cold and crawled into bed again. Walking back into my room, I could survey the damage: apparently my sink decided to start leaking in a serious way, the shelving in my shower decided to fall, and my room was a giant mess of my clothes which I had managed to take off piece by piece over night. Either my entire flat smells slightly of the acidic contents of my stomach, or my nose has been burned by the acid and it's all I can taste and smell.

Everything is a mess and I just want last night to have not happened. I am so embarrassed I don't want to face anyone today. Even though I am not hung over, the whole evening made me feel really vulnerable and lonely.