I really love my department here. The faculty are amazing and inspiring, and the facilities are really not to be topped by many other fine arts printmaking programs. The one thing I really dislike are some of the people.
This morning, I walked into my studio, ready to work on my thesis work for the day, and I find my studio name tag vandalised.
This wasn't the worst, but someone scralled a cursive phrase onto my name tag that bugs me so much. This phrase is written or scratched on other surfaces in the building, and obviously whoever writes it is into destroying or marking things that do not belong to them. My name tag read:
I don't do shit
Katherine Hale
Printmaking
Senior
What bugs me so much is that I've heard other seniors in my department talking behind my back that I'm never in my studio. I confronted someone once, who was announcing their judgement of me while I was actually in my studio. The spaces here are all cubby hole style, so the walls are not to the ceiling. If someone is talking loud enough, everyone on the floor can hear it. Thats what happened this time. "Katie is NEVER in her studio. Why the fu** did they even give her one." I pipe up, "Excuse me, but I'm here right now." My smack talking classmate stopped her rant at that point.
The bottom line is, I am here in my studio and I do work. Lots.
I tend to try to get the bulk of my work done during the week, so I have weekends mostly free for errands or personal time. I think this decision is completely personal, and while it flys in the face of the time management that most of my classmates choose (working on weekends and evenings), I haven't ever sensed a problem. My time is my time, theirs likewise.
What is alternately so aggrevating is that I am one of a handful of seniors who actually fill their thesis studio hours every single monday. I am required to be here from 9am to 8pm, but no one checks on me. Were seniors in college, we should be able to get to an independently driven class on time every week by now. Out of fifteen seniors who have space in these studios, about 4 show up each week for the predominate amount of out assigned class time. Everyone else shows up to the lectures and things where roll is taken. I am baffelled at how any of these students can get any thesis work done without utilizing their studio hours each week, but it's none of my business what they choose to do. Which gets back to my point, why vandalize my things with "I don't do shit" when whoever wrote it is actually the one who doesn't do shit?!
I have no proof as to who might have written on my name tag, and I've taken the tag down for now. I do have suspicisions about who did it. I'm going to prove whoever wrote that wrong by continuing my normal work schedule, graduating with honors in may, and being satisfied that a petty vandal was completely wrong about me.
