CCA: First Impressions
I'm still biding my time until orientation next week and the beginning of classes the week after, but I've now met a few of my classmates at an evite-organized bar thing and seen the Oakland campus as well. I'll admit right now that I don't have anything too inspired to say about this (so please excuse the fact that my observations will be littered with adjectives like "cool" and "nice"), but I thought I should mark the monumentality of my first CCA-related experiences with a post...
I met about half of my classmates (OK, exactly half-- there are only 10 of us total, after all) at the bar thing last Saturday and about half of the second-year class, as well. Everyone seems...really nice, friendly, normal... which was unexpected. Not that I didn't expect people to be normal, but I guess I was letting my imagination of the sullen, artsy, inaccessible personality stereotype run away with me. Which really has nothing to do with what I expected of other people and far more with what I expected of myself, in relation to the group. As a 23 year-old, I expected to feel young in comparison to everyone else and, as a consequence, to kind of take on the role of the boisterous runt of the group who's always running circles around everyone else to prove that I should be here. Strangely enough, this is a role that I actually idealized... in reality, of course, this would have its drawbacks. Granted, I haven't met everyone yet or gotten any sort of sense of what the group dynamic will be like (much less how any of us will interact in an academic setting), but so far everyone seems to be on similar wavelengths.
This afternoon, I drove to the Oakland campus with Danny, a fellow first-year and new friend, to check out the Oakland CCA scene and drop off my work-study applications (for a couple of gallery positions). The campus was really beautiful and far more traditional than the SF campus (which is a small cluster of converted, industrial buildings situated on a convergence of side streets), plus it was all abuzz with undergrads and their parental figures, so it felt very cute and collegy. Danny and I both marveled at the fact that we were "the new kids" again, which we'd already experienced freshman year of college, only this time without the requisite angst and cynicism that any self-respecting high schooler achieves. All in all, the campus was... nice. It's also situated next to a high school that's housed in portables covered in really beautiful graffiti idolizing hip-hop superstars, which was cool.
One thing that the visit to Oakland did make me think about was the question of whether undergrads, namely freshmen in college, are ready to go to "Art School". My instinct is, no: the best thing about my undergrad education was having the freedom to change my mind and dabble in many things before finding a focus or declaring a major. Going to a school like CCA as an undergrad seems very limiting. This won't really affect my own academic experience at CCA, but it will be interesting to think more about this question if and when I become a TA, which I'm hoping to do. For now, just something to ponder.
I met about half of my classmates (OK, exactly half-- there are only 10 of us total, after all) at the bar thing last Saturday and about half of the second-year class, as well. Everyone seems...really nice, friendly, normal... which was unexpected. Not that I didn't expect people to be normal, but I guess I was letting my imagination of the sullen, artsy, inaccessible personality stereotype run away with me. Which really has nothing to do with what I expected of other people and far more with what I expected of myself, in relation to the group. As a 23 year-old, I expected to feel young in comparison to everyone else and, as a consequence, to kind of take on the role of the boisterous runt of the group who's always running circles around everyone else to prove that I should be here. Strangely enough, this is a role that I actually idealized... in reality, of course, this would have its drawbacks. Granted, I haven't met everyone yet or gotten any sort of sense of what the group dynamic will be like (much less how any of us will interact in an academic setting), but so far everyone seems to be on similar wavelengths.
This afternoon, I drove to the Oakland campus with Danny, a fellow first-year and new friend, to check out the Oakland CCA scene and drop off my work-study applications (for a couple of gallery positions). The campus was really beautiful and far more traditional than the SF campus (which is a small cluster of converted, industrial buildings situated on a convergence of side streets), plus it was all abuzz with undergrads and their parental figures, so it felt very cute and collegy. Danny and I both marveled at the fact that we were "the new kids" again, which we'd already experienced freshman year of college, only this time without the requisite angst and cynicism that any self-respecting high schooler achieves. All in all, the campus was... nice. It's also situated next to a high school that's housed in portables covered in really beautiful graffiti idolizing hip-hop superstars, which was cool.
One thing that the visit to Oakland did make me think about was the question of whether undergrads, namely freshmen in college, are ready to go to "Art School". My instinct is, no: the best thing about my undergrad education was having the freedom to change my mind and dabble in many things before finding a focus or declaring a major. Going to a school like CCA as an undergrad seems very limiting. This won't really affect my own academic experience at CCA, but it will be interesting to think more about this question if and when I become a TA, which I'm hoping to do. For now, just something to ponder.
posted by Jess Brier at 10:16 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home