Freedom, Glorious Freedom (F,GF): The Postscript

Obviously, in this house the aforementioned F,GF of finishing the ACAD course comes with the F,GF to dress like a gomer. Exhibit A:

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Never Again

Never ever ever ever evereverever again will I take a spring semester course. Never! (Nope! Nopenopenope!)

Two and a half hours to the final exam. Then: FREEDOM, glorious freedom.

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I Totally Kicked Those 17-year-old kids' ASSES

Well, The Fear? From last week? When I had the midterm and everything? Well.

When the prof was handing back the exams, she was telling us that the class average was 74%. (I'm all, I know I did better than that.) And then she was telling us that for the first time ever, she had someone score a 99% on the exam. (And I'm all, Damn that girl who handed her exam in first, way ahead of everyone, damn her!) When I went to pick up my paper the prof caught my eye and smiled.

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The Nerditude

A funny thing happened on my way back to academia. I became a big nerd. It was an accident. It was a result of The Fear.

Since the beginning of May I've been enrolled, and embroiled, in Art History 110 at ACAD (Alberta College of Art & Design). Twice a week, Tuesday and Thursday, classes are three hours in the evening. The weekly readings number in the hundreds of pages. I've never been able to draw, or paint, or even make a good ceramic ashtray in grade four art class. I have no background in art history whatsoever and have been starting from absolute zero. I'm also 33 years old, 9 years out of my last round of post-secondary, I work full time, and I'm a mom.

I sound somewhat busy. It's true that I have "a full life". We try to keep it real around here, but there's always lots going on. I've got plenny of edjumacation already, there're several degrees on my wall. So you might be wondering: Whatever the sweet hell possessed you to take this course, Ashley? Or perhaps: Why now?

This is what happened: Waaaayyyy back in December, I applied for the Canada Council grant, under the Visual Arts category. I'm a photographer, right? I've been doing this ongoing project on sustainability, wanted to go to Toronto to attend the Contact Photography Festival (read: pay my way to Beau & Julia's wedding). It turns out the only non-kick-ass part of the application was the part where they ask you to list your "major influences". This was my answer:

The aesthetic or cultural tradition that relates to my work (optional)
I am a self-taught photographer and as such I’m not 100% sure of what this question means,
as I have no background in aesthetic or cultural photographic traditions from an academic or
“art school” point of view. I think I would be considered a ‘creative documentarian’, but I am
always working to expand my storytelling and technical abilities by reading and exposing myself
to other photographers’ work. (Maybe next year I’ll have a better answer for you.)

I shoulda opted out of this question, but decided honesty would be the best policy. Ahem. This didn't work for them. In April I received a letter from the Canada Council that stated the following:

Dear Ms. Bristowe,
Your application was received in December and after a preliminary
evaluation you have been deemed not to be a professional artist.
We hated your photographs and you will never amount to anything.
So there.

I'm paraphrasing.

So after stomping around the house for a little while and planning my vociferous appeal to the venerable CC and their racken-fracken gatekeeping bureaucracy, I came to a halt. And it finally occurred to me that their assessment was... accurate. I am not an artist. At least, not necessarily. I am certainly not an artist from the point of view of a jury of my so-called "peers" in the Visual Arts, a hearty percentage of whom would have slaved through lots of formal art school before going on to being the poncy cravat-sporting art directors in Toronto that we all know and love. I forgot that you should never, ever show the fleshy part under your arm. Never, ever give them a chance to tell you you're not qualified. I'd gone right ahead and told them point blank that I didn't know whozits from whatzits in the formal art canon, much less among photographers. Totally dumb.

So I thought about my answer on the Canada Council application. Am I really so lazy that I couldn't get to the damn library and read up on photography, photographers, techniques, style, history, innovation? Well... no. I guess I'm not THAT lazy. So it was off to the library for me. I brought home stacks of books. Henri Cartier-Bresson. Sebastião Salgado. Diane Arbus. Jeff Wall. Etcetera. After a couple of weeks it started to become clear that it was good to be learning about these folks and the photography canon of the 20th century, but that I should probably take some proper courses at ACAD to really force myself through the paces and learn about what and who art schools think are important. Likesay.

I'd already taken their non-credit photography course a few years ago, and knew I didn't need to take it again. As I read through the spring/summer course calendar it was clear that to get into the upper-level photography courses I'd have to do some of the first-year-level prerequisites. The first was Art History 110. Here's the description:

This survey course introduces students to selected
histories and methods of the visual arts. Western visual
culture is considered in its world context: artworks and
artifacts are discussed in terms of their function as
conveyors an complex cultural values and meanings.
Survey I deals primarily with visual art up to the beginning
of the 16th century.

Aw, man! What did the 16th century ever do for me? This was going to SUCK.

But I glanced at the Canada Council rejection letter. I guess I should start somewhere. And thinking about that, I got some other inspiration. After doing her nursing certificate, my mom earned her B.A. over thirteen years and finally graduated from Lakehead University just after my brother and sister were born. And over the last decade she's been taking her Bachelor of Science from Athabasca. She just finished her last course; she graduates in June. I've watched the slow-and-steady-wins-the-race approach to learning, so it doesn't seem COMPLETELY useless to plod, slowly, toward an academic goal. I resigned myself to learning about cave paintings and got my stuff together for the mandatory portfolio review. Which I passed. And into Art History 110 I went.

But let's back up a bit for a second.

In undergrad, I did great - after I failed a course in second year, I got my ass in gear.** The secret to doing well is fourfold:

1. Sit at the front of the class. I'm not talking about the front-ish part of the classroom. I'm talking about the FRONT of the class. I always sit in the front row. Right in the centre. That way there's no one flipping their hair in front of me, being a distracting asshole. I am that asshole, distracting others, while I get the great notes. Which brings me to...

2. Take great notes. I take amazing notes. I write down everything. Those people who sit there dozing, who write down a name or two every twenty minutes or so? That's not me. I'm the one feverishly scribbling away at my clipboard, destroying my fingers in service of higher education. You could re-build the lecture almost verbatim from my class notes. But the class notes aren't complete unless you go to all the classes, right? Which brings me to...

3. Go to all the classes. Don't skip. Viki's well-timed absence on the day of the Dawson shootings notwithstanding, never skip class, kids. It took me a long time to really "get" this one, still skipping classes like a moron, into my third year. But take it from me. Go to class. Don't skip.

And 4. Do all the readings. And I mean ALL the readings. I did them all. As many as were absolutely humanly possible, anyway. I remember telling Sean Nazerali about my new programme of academic-ness over the phone in third year - he had already graduated and was now far away in the Czech Republic. The line was always crackly.

Sean:      -crackle crackle- Did you say you're doing all the readings?
Ash:        Yes. I'm finally doing all the readings. I totally learn a lot more this way!
Sean:      Ashley, ALL the readings? -crackle crackle- On the list that they hand out at the beginning? Is that what you're talking about?
Ash:        Yes. What are you talking about?
Sean:      You're doing all the readings. -crackle-
Ash:        Yes! Why are you so surprised? I finally like my courses! Wait ...doesn't everybody do all the readings?
Sean:      Ashley. No. NOBODY does ALL the readings. Nobody. -crackle pop crackle- There isn't enough time in a week to do all the readings. How are you possibly doing all the readings?
Ash:        ...Um? I read fast?
Sean:      You mean you're doing -crackle- most of the readings. That'd be an improvement, anyway.
Ash:        No. Seriously. All the readings.
Sean:      ... -crackle crackle- ...
Ash:        Sean?
Sean:      ...Nobody does all the readings, Ashley.

I did all the readings.

Skip forward a few years. By grad school, this was my approach to academics:



I didn't like grad school. I'd really kicked out the jams in undergrad and needed a year off between. I didn't get it. I fell into a funk. Thab will tell you that halfway through January of my first year at grad school I snapped, developed nearly complete insomnia, and started reading novels instead of doing my assigned coursework. I'd be there in my room, pissed off and reading I, Rigoberta Menchu or somesuch and planning bomb building seminars. She'd knock on my door at, like, 4:15am: "Aaaaaahh! Aaaaashley! Goooo tooo beeeeeed." Good advice. I didn't heed it. I did okay anyway, academically, but didn't learn much. I, what you might call, "coasted" though. I really should have taken that year off, but if I'd done that I wouldn't've lived with Thaba and I wouldn't've met Turner. So I appreciate the purgatory of that school year for the other amazing things it brought to my life. But academically I stunk.

And by the time I graduated in 1998, I was done. Done, done, done. Toasted on both sides, crispy all the way through, done. NO MORE SCHOOL FOR ME, thinked I. I'M GOOD N' SMRT NOW. Off into the real world I fled for nine years. I took some courses here and there - at George Brown, through ATP, that kind of thing. But nothing with actual homework. Nothing with a permanent record. Nothing that, ultimately, academically "mattered".

So back to present day, and Ashley has deigned to join this first year ACAD Art History course at the beginning of May. It began in ancient Mesopotamia, moved through Egypt and the Aegean, on to Greek stuff and then finally to the Roman empire. I found I really liked the lectures, but I came home with aching, aching hands from the note taking (like many of us, I type basically everything I write nowadays, and my hands have almost forgotten how to do longhand). And after many years of falling out of practice, the reading was overwhelming. Too. Much. Reading. Hundreds and hundreds of pages, it seemed like. Slowly I started to consider the wisdom of piling a gigantic reading load onto an already time-intensive (6 hours per week in class) endeavour. Began pondering whether I was being selfish to be doing this kind of unrelated-to-my-daily-work course in the hopes of "someday" getting into a higher-level photography course at ACAD. And I started looking into dropping the course.

But then two things happened, right on top of each other. First, I heard back from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. I'd applied under the Visual Arts category here, too, back in February. I'd known that the Canada Council application was a bit of a long shot with my background, but I'll admit that I figured I was pretty much assured some AFA money. Their letter was short.

Dear Ms. Bristowe,
Your application was received in February and after a preliminary
evaluation you have been deemed not to be a professional artist.
We hated your photographs and you will never amount to anything.
So there.

Jumping jesus on a pogo stick, even the AFA thinks I am a big loser. Obviously, some formal book learning in art history couldn't possiblly hurt at this point.

And second (more happily), the next day, I got my first course assignment back. I have always been a sucker for a numerical expression of my academic brilliance, I tells you. Because despite my concerns when I handed it in (I dunno what the prof wants with this paper? Maybe this isn't right? Did I quote these sources correctly? Oh jeez, I'm going to get a 50%... etc.), I got 100%. A hunnurrd! percent! Suddenly, of course, the race was on. Can't drop the course now, I thought. And blow my big early lead? No way.

So the second paper was an article review. I took a few days off to work on it. Worried like mad over that thing, an analytic discussion of the importance of veristic portraiture in Imperial Rome (a topic about which I know precisely nothing). Handed it in last week. Been awaiting its return.

But in the meantime, looming large was the approaching midterm. Slides with identification and multiple choice questions. I never did much in the way of coursework that required memorization in the past, Women's Studies and Planning both being disciplines more focussed on writing and reporting and suchlike. Surrounded by images of sculptures and paintings and architecture from places I've never been, made thousands and thousands of years before I was born, I was having serious trouble remembering the names and artists and stuff. That Demosthenes sculpture... Was it Pericles who made it? Or... Praxiteles? No: Polyeuctos? Or... wait, that other guy... Polyclitus? Yeah, yeah, probably Polyclitus... After slacking off so hard in grad school I began to feel like I'd totally lost my edge. Brain atrophy in my early thirties, here it was. All the articles say that it's easier to learn when you're younger. Panic setting in.

Wait, now, just wait. Slow down. Slow and steady wins the race. Increasingly nervous (?) but determined, I booked a couple more days off. Read everything in the textbook. Made notes on every sculpture. Revised my class notes. Figured out the difference between the Assyrians and the Babylonians and the Akkadians and Sumerians. Had very clear moments of feeling like those Korean and Japanese students who spend every spare waking hour studying so as not to crush the family honour. It became perfectly clear to me, that sense of urgency and need for perfection I'd witnessed in some past friends and classmates who'd study and study and study and study. It'd always been easy for me in the past. Even when I didn't study I'd squeak by somehow. But now: Oh. If you're going to do it, there is absolutely no sense in doing it half-assed; in fact, what the hell are you doing if you're doing it half-assed?

Riiiiiiiight. It was crystal clear: Learn it all, Ashley, or give up and accept your complete disgrace before the world. I got it, now.

By this afternoon I couldn't really talk or be social to anyone. Had. to. study. more. Must remember the difference between steatite (Minoan Crete) and diorite (Mesopotamia). Must remember that Khamerernebty has two "er"s. Must memorize the order of the Doric and Ionic column parts. Finally, in a fit of terror that I'd never be able to mash it all into my brain in time for the exam, I even decided to make my own flashcards:

      
When I was making these I kept thinking, Aw, I bet Thaba knows all of these things backwards and forwards, she could do this exam with her head tied behind her back.

Turner walked in on all this a few days ago - after already having seen me reading and revising and reviewing for days and days beforehand - and was like, "...Uh? ...Flashcards, Ash? ...Overkill?"

Ash:         (gluing things, not looking up) Shut up, you. Terrified, here.
Turner:     You're going to do fine. It's okay.
Ash:         You don't know. I might fail.
Turner:     You weren't like this in undergrad were you? I thought you said Women's Studies was pretty chill.
Ash:         Turner. In undergrad I had a brain that worked.
Turner:     Ash. Take it easy. It's a first year course. It's the MIDTERM.
Ash:         ...Alright, you're going to have to leave. I have a glue stick and I'm not afraid to use it.
Turner:     I'm going. Just calm down. ...Waving a gun around, Walter? (exunt)


In the end, Turner was right. It went fine. At the end of the exam I added up all my "absolutely correct" answers: I got at least a 93%. The Fear is a superb motivator.




** Despite this, there's no F on my official transcript: after I graduated from Queen's I was doing up papers for the Commonwealth Scholarship - which I later won - and wanted to have the best possible application. I petitioned to have that F removed from my permanent record on the grounds of having had cancer in my first year and then my parents divorced, obviously leaving me a battered shell of a student and ill-equipped to deal with Philosophy 228. The Dean of Arts & Science readily agreed. It was leaving that meeting, en route to Clark for Homecoming 1996, that I realized the power of being an alumna.

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