Bought a Desk, Started Classes

In response to last class, I did finally buy a desk. Found it on craigslist, and managed to buy it for $25 less than it was offered for (and much less than new from Ikea). I love that I have a room big enough for a big desk! Although I know I’ll now be tethered to it…I suppose graduate work just never stops.

So here are my classes:
Art Ed 101 (oh yes, intro to Art Education)
Ed Psy 421 (Educational Psychology)
Art Hist 111 (survey class covering Ancient to Medieval Art)
CI 597 (Arts Across the Curriculum)

The undergrad classes (Art Ed and Art History) have so much more work associated with them than the grad classes. Well, at least a lot more assignments due.

We have a quiz every week in Art History f0r a specific section (Ancient Egyptian art, Roman art, Byzantium art, etc.). Since it’s an online class, the lectures are just videos posted online…but instead of taking the usual 2 or 3 hours per week (like a regular class), the video lectures average about 6-8 hours each week. And I’m sure it doesn’t help that I’m a perfectionist and end up writing every thing the professor says down in my notes.

As for the Art Ed class, we have to write a short paper every week on what we learned in class. Hopefully I’ll get into a groove of posting them on here…might be a bit boring, but at least it’ll give an idea of what I’m learning? Here’s the first week’s post, about what makes an effective arts educator.

My New Apartment

The biggest change from the city to State College is my living options. Hate to say it, but if you want to live in Manhattan proper, there’s not much available that’s safe and actually livable (no bathtubs in the kitchen, etc) for under $1000/month. At PSU, for $500 you could get a semi-nice room in a downtown apartment close to campus, a studio a bit farther away, or your own room in a house nearby.

I elected to go for even farther away (a whole 5 minute drive away from the PSU commuter parking lots) and live at Toftrees. Found my room through Craigslist, and am currently living with another 20something grad student. Check out the floor plan to the left, and you can even go to the Toftrees website and play around with furnishings online. I’m in the smaller bedroom (comparatively, it’s about 4x bigger than my bedroom in NYC), and pay less than 1/2 of what I was paying.

Now on to decorating! Need to buy a desk and figure out which pictures I’d like to hang.

Changes!

I got accepted into grad school!

I moved from NYC back to Pennsylvania!
I subletted a new apartment!
I started classes!
Will be talking about all of these things shortly, just wanted to close the very wide gap between now and my last post.