Watch out. This is a really long and unorganized blog post!
Right now I’m enrolled in the Animation/Illustration BFA program at SJSU. And it’s DAMN hard and I am really struggling. I’m so close to graduating. I just have three more semesters to go and I can have my BFA degree in Animation and/or Illustration. This semester has been such a struggle for me. I’ve broken down into tears a few times at school because I was just so disappointed in my work and myself. I spoke with my major advisor a couple weeks ago and he suggested I either switch majors and go into the Digital Media program or just get out of school early with a BA in Animation/Illustration. He said if I’m not happy, I should change my path.
I checked out the Digital Media program and wasn’t impressed by it at all. It looked really boring and abstract. I didn’t think I’d really learn anything at all in that program. So that option was out.
I dismissed the thought of a BA right away because I knew a BA degree wasn’t worth as much as a BFA. I feel like a BA is what you get if you aren’t skilled enough or have thick enough skin to get the BFA. It’s like the consolation prize. If you don’t get accepted into the BFA program, you just go for the BA instead. I did make it into the program. I was accepted. Now I’m just feeling like I don’t have what it takes to survive the program.
Side note about Animation/Illustration: The animation and illustration degrees at SJSU are the same with the exception of a few classes in the end. Everyone majoring in Illustration takes animation classes and vice versa. Just a few classes at the end are different between the two. Most people take classes for both.
The real question though is am I feeling depressed because I am unhappy with my work? Or am I unhappy with my work because I’m depressed? Will I feel better after this semester is over?
As many of my friends know, I have Attention Deficit Disorder. I was diagnosed with it when I was seven because I was having difficulty paying attention in school. There is one statistic that keeps screaming out of my head every time I feel like I’m failing in college. Less than 5% of those with ADD ever get a college degree. So I feel like I have a 95% chance of failing and not getting my degree. I know some of you might be thinking it’s stupid to think these things. But it just runs through my head a lot. It’s like that statistic is there, looming over me; like people are expecting me to fail.
So what kind of work am I doing this semester? Well I’m enrolled in Visual Development (aka Advanced Illustration) and Advanced Animation. Vis dev is difficult because it requires a LOT of work. Most of the assignments are things like designing an environment and/or building for a live action movie. It requires a LOT of research, tons of ideation drawings, and then sketches and more finished drawings done with tone to capture the mood of the environment to help tell the story.
My biggest problem this semester is procrastination. Most of the time I do the bulk of my homework on Monday night before it’s due, Tuesday. So pretty last minute. So what’s my problem? I don’t really work at my job that often, and when I do work, I work from home at my leisure. So having a job isn’t the issue. Is it too much TV or video games? No, I hardly ever play or watch these days. My boyfriend? Well that might be a big part of it. I spend a lot of time with him. But there are many hours of the day that I have on the weekends that I could be doing homework. Believe me, I try really hard. I get all my materials and set them on my desk and sit down to work and… I try hard but I just can’t get myself to do it. I might do it for a few minutes but then I get sleepy and want to go take a nap. Often times I do. I sleep a lot on the weekends. Which is probably because I’m depressed. I’m not a person you want to be around on the weekends. I’m really crabby. I am agitated and easily frustrated. I can’t do any homework. I sit down and try but I just can’t do it. I sit down to do the work but my brain just isn’t in the right state to do it. Like I’m not in the mood. Everything I draw is just frustrated and crappy and… AAAHH. It’s like I can’t work at all on the weekends. So I spend my time on the weekends with my boyfriend and working on my websites. And then I do my homework on Sunday and Monday nights.
As soon as I’m finished writing this blog entry, I’ll be getting to homework. I have an assignment due tomorrow. I’ll probably pull an all-nighter.
My frustrations with vis dev are the same in animation. My work isn’t up to par because I don’t spend enough time on it. And it shows. My first pass of my animation assignments really stink. I don’t put in the time. I often will do my homework for that class hours before class starts. The second and third passes I do better but it hurts me that I don’t put in the effort in the beginning.
And the past couple weeks my animation has been really terrible. Because I’ve been spending all of my time on vis dev. And my vis dev work is starting to get better and show some promise.
So on Tuesday of last week (the week of Thanksgiving) I was finally starting to feel better this semester because my vis dev work was showing some promise. My teacher even said it was starting to have “juice” as he calls it. Meaning it has some mood and the drawings are intriguing. I was feeling better that day until we had a visit from an alumni. He does vis dev type work for Sony video games. He’s also worked at other places like Electronic Arts. He told us to enjoy our time in school because the real world is much tougher. He also explained how he works tons of overtime. This wasn’t news to me. I heard about the EA lawsuit and how all of these video game companies are working their employees to death, making them work 60-80 hours a week on a regular basis.
A little bit of overtime isn’t a problem with me. That’s expected with any job. But how do you expect a person to work that many hours AND raise a family? Yeah I plan to get married and have children some day. But how can a person work 60 or 80 hours a week and not come home dead tired? If you are too tired, you can’t be there for your children or even husband or wife. The relationship could suffer. I don’t want that sort of life.
So I was really discouraged when I went home for Thanksgiving. All these thoughts about how the industry is harder than school and the overtime hours. It just gave me more reason to just hurry up and get out of school and start my career doing websites professionally.
That is another reason I’m considering getting the BA. Just get out of school and do websites instead. Web programming is something I have a passion for and spend hours and hours doing it. PaperDemon.com is my biggest web programming accomplishment. I have total and complete confidence in my abilities as a web programmer and designer. And probably the main reason for that is because I’m self taught. There isn’t anyone there to tell me “Hey you are doing this wrong” or “This isn’t good enough.” With programming, it either works or it doesn’t. And my programs and scripts work. So, I know I’m good at it. I’m not perfect. I make mistakes here and there. Occasionally someone will report a bug or display problem to me and I fix it ASAP. But for the most part, I’m great at making websites.
So why not do that as a career? Well there are plenty of people out there who do it already and many companies won’t even consider me because I don’t have a computer science degree. I have an ART degree (or will soon enough). I could probably do free lance stuff. But there are a lot of people out there with the skills I have.
This topic is to be continued in a future post. I have to stop procrastinating and get back to work now. I had a nice talk with a fellow student and he’s cheered me up on the subject. I can’t spend any more time today talking about this now. Perhaps tomorrow or something.
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