5th February 2008
Time has passed since my mental struggle, and I am proud to say I made it. The Daemon Paper has been handed in, and I shall ne'er gaze upon its fiery pages again! WOOHOOO! Eight thousand and sixty six was the final word count. The minimum required was eight thousand so I sopped writing pretty much as soon as I passed the finish line. It has been a massive weight off my shoulders I must say!
I want to say a huge thank you to everyone, family and friends for all their supportive words and help through my struggle. Dan, Rachel, Sharon, Simon, Mark, Laurie, I definately could not have done it without you! My family and friends are my foundation, with it I feel I can achieve anything.
As to whether I passed or not... well time will tell. For now, I can relax a little, and focus on my FINAL PROJECT. This is it. The end is nigh.... in May. With no Paper From Hell to worry about it seems like its plain sailing from here on out.
On another note, I bought a piano. It is good to feel the weighty keys dance beneath my fingers once again. I used to have lessons when I was little, and I had been waiting till we had a little space and time before I took it up again. The memories of dad playing have come flooding back as I resume learning my homage to him, Fur Elise. Because of this my animation project shall take a more personal note, although I won't yet go into more detail, you will just have to wait till the finished product. (And wait of course until I figure out a way to get my damn animations on here... I think it will have to be via a link to photobucket or some such thing.)
For now, farewell and I leave you with this quote, from somewhere or other... "If you want to be happy, be." Yes... it all seems so ridiculously simple now, doesn't it!?
~Tanya
20th November 2007
Ah here it is, finally, the next entry of my website, and my isn't it quite the entry. Like good old Stephen Fry, I have written my very own Blessay.
"It really is a question of time, as to which fear will win out first; my fear of leaving uni and failing, or staying in uni and being miserable for the next few months. Is a bit of misery really worth leaving uni for? And when I leave uni with whatever grade I get I could look back and be happy that I got through it. But if I fail, all that misery was for nothing. I will still be able to say that I went to uni now, even if I don’t see it through to the end. Is it really worth spending that money for those extra few months? If I leave now, I could get a job, cancel my grant, pay back my debts, and start thinking about changing direction.
Am I afraid of failing if I leave uni? If I leave, I could go back onto a course doing stuff with animals. But where does that lead? I go onto a new course, lasting another age of my life, and end up hating that, and wanting to leave it, another dead end. So my choice is to give up completely, just be a housewife. Do flighty projects that I enjoy.
Everyone says that I have so much potential. That I’m amazing at drawing and that I should do that, that I can put my mind to anything and so I should reach for the sky. But what if I don’t want to be in the sky, what if I want to be on the ground. What if I'm happy not achieving? What if I'm afraid of trying and failing."
That was the way I was feeling, when I wanted to quit the course. I had walked to the countryside to sit upon a favoured hill, and enjoy the sunshine in my depressed state of mind. As I sat on the hill I took out my computer as I had no pen and paper, and I typed up my feelings, letting my heart pour out its woe so that when I was more clear-headed I could read back through it and separate my wild and wilful emotions from what I really wanted.
It’s been a while, and as for staying or going, I’m staying. The careers advisors assumption was that because I had done well in the past despite my problems so I was going to continue doing well despite my doubtful feelings. Well wasn’t she wrong… It is the rough hand in for my dissertation today, and I have only done about 1500 words. Out of a proposed 8000-10000. Yah… like that’s going to happen by 4.30 pm.
So I am sitting here writing this instead, because I figure, I’m fighting a losing battle, and I need to change my tactics if I plan to succeed. I’m going to hand in what I’ve done so far, and be happy with what I’ve done so far, but I am not going to force it because there is only about an hour left and I would end up just writing complete gobbledygook. At least if I hand in what I’ve written so far he can give me some feedback on where I’m going wrong. Preferably not in person as that man can talk for Britain about stuff that I don’t really care about and I would rather he read what I did, put lots of little notes on it as to where I could do better and give it back to me. I find that kind of feedback so much easier to manage. My work always benefits from that kind of written feedback.
Its not that I mind how I fare at the end of this course, as long as I pass I’m happy, its more having to show my embarrassing “doesn’t pass for children’s drawings” animations in front of the rest of the class, most of whom have genuinely spent the entire 15 weeks hard at work on their project and have made a sterling effort. I don’t want them to see mine and laugh at how terrible it is because I spent about half the time and effort than they did. They want to be doing it, and I don’t. I know I shouldn’t care what other people think, but that’s the only reason I’m still at uni, isn’t it? Because I care what other people think, I care that people will look at my CV and see “degree” and think ooh… she’ll work for us then. Because the funny thing is, I don’t think I’m ever going to use that benefit. I don’t care, I only think I should care because whenever I ask for advice on the matter that’s what people tell me. I’m not ever going to attempt for some high paying job that needs qualifications. If I ever did, I would probably need to go back into education anyway because it would be a different subject completely.
Okay so the careers advisor said “it may make certain doors easier to open, certain doors that if you didn’t have it might not open.” How uncertain is that statement?! I feel like I’m wasting all this stress and effort over “buts” and “maybes”. How empty and hollow these weeks do feel. Why am I wasting my time over an uncertain future when I should be enjoying each day as it comes? Using my time to advance things I want to be doing now. Well the truth is, I am. I’m doing the things that I want to be doing, and my university work is suffering for it. I attempted to turn my uni work around so that it interested me, but at every turn the tutors seem to be standing in my way, because they know as well as I do, that if I were to try to bend my work to fit my interests, it wouldn’t be worth marking. My interests do not fit my studies. If I were to do my dissertation on a scientific subject it would fail because it isn’t art oriented. And any attempt by me to turn science into an arty topic drains all interest from it; I get bored talking about some artists work to do with science, I DON’T CARE. It’s his work, not mine. Ask him about it. And I can’t think of any arty argument I want to discuss for pages and pages and pages… how boring!
The tutors seem determined to have us all doing work to a certain degree of narrative quality, or abstract quality, it has to have a reason behind it, it cant be just for fun. Where is the depth? Where is the artistic pretentiousness? We must ask many questions of the work, it must open up some secret door inside our soul, make us consider what it is to think we think what thinking is…
I am not an artist. I am a craftsperson. I love to do things with my hands, create things that are of use, but I do not like to create useless twaddle with pretentious titles that pretentious people muse over in their pretentious ways. Sure like any Average Jane I like to look at art that I find pleasurable to look at, but then I move on, I like to create art myself rather than look at other peoples. I am Tulagogo, Craftswoman. Not Tanya Gaffney-Greetham BA. That’s the one thing that uni has helped me realise. It has helped me realise who I am and what I want from life. I don’t regret going through uni. It has been a lovely learning experience. Unfortunately now that I have learnt what I need to I know wish to move on but am in some terrible vortex of inability because as humans we feel the need to grade an individual’s performance in a system that doesn’t allow for the individual! In their opinion, there is only one way of doing it, and any deviancy from the normal way of doing things is considered wrong, or less able to “open doors”. Is university really the only way? Why are humans so fickle as to rate a person on what they have done in the past, in order to judge their performance in the future? ESPECIALLY with art subjects, just because a person hasn’t gained the qualification doesn’t mean that they can’t work as an artist. And individuals always seem to need extra training for a job anyway, because each employer has different needs. It makes me laugh, “You don’t need a degree to work here, but it helps!” like “you don’t need to be mad to work here, but it helps!”
None of this matters to me because I am geared to be self-employed. Own a shop of crafty things for people to buy, photos, knitted things, artwork, fashion, sculpted ornaments, bread the list goes on and on and on. I don’t need a degree. I believe that if a person is really meant to do something in life, then it will work out for them, because they have the dedication, NOT because they have a degree. Sure it makes sense to me that jobs of a more technical level would need some learning, but all that counts to me is that I’m happy and I don’t need a high paying job to do that, I just need to enjoy what I am doing.
I guess this doesn’t really have a conclusion, because I know the only choice I have is to finish uni. It is too late to leave, and would cost more than just sticking it out. But I need something to keep me sane. I need something to keep me producing work they can mark. I need incentive.
~Tanya
27th March 2007
I am struggling to get to grips with my new project at uni. Ideas are suprisingly hard to come by when there isn't a definitive brief title to work with. It doesn't help that I'm finally getting to grips with this whole website making thing, and really going just a little bit mental over it. Ah well, I'm fickle, so I'll get bored of it quickly. At least for the moment I'm satisfied with the overall look of the thing, but I'm spending so much time getting the look right I won't ever get round to making anything worth putting on here. I suppose that is a good note to say adios on, and go get something substantial done, but I still have that little urge to defy the system. "You want me to do work? SCREW YOU!" And then sensibility kicks in. Ah well... those were the days.
Adios my friend.
~Tanya
