The Lost Bird

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I have been entirely caught up in my high school placement as of late that any simple daily task becomes a difficult one that I find myself unable to complete. And I begin to wonder, am I doing the right thing?

No. I am not. And that is because I have become disorganised. That is what I need to reevaluate about myself at the moment.  I have become so accustomed to the laid-backness of university student lifestyle that it has become hard for me to become accustomed to my temporary stay at a high school, a place where organisation is highly essential. 

And so my days are quite fast. I spend my mornings and afternoons at placement, and then I come home, sit immobile for hours on end until I feel that I have regained some headspace, wherein I find that the time has gone by so fast that I have barely any time to shower or write up lesson plans for the following day. This all becomes disastrous when I come to the realisation that in the duration of these busy times, I am meant to be completing work for my laid back university. Reading lengthy novels, forming opinions on them, creating art works, creating lesson plans for art works, working on folios - it never ends. The list is growing rapidly and I am accomplishing less than I should at this point in time. 

But something occurred to me just then, as I was getting out of the shower. I heard a bird calling. It is 11:30pm in the evening - all birds should be fast asleep at this point of the night. But this one was not. It called twice. It sounded desperate for a reply. I have come to the conclusion that it is lost. In this cold, dark, wet night, it is lost, calling out to its family or friends and it cannot find anyone. It is quiet now because all I hear is the heavy pouring of the rain.

It is lost. It is drowning in its confusion - how could it let itself be lost in a desolate setting wherein it does not belong? How could it not have eaten and found a place to roost before sundown? How could it lose its flock of friends and relatives? How is it feeling at the moment?

And something else occurred to me. I am that bird.

Childish Gambino

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In these fast times, it is rare for one to stop and consider with another of the same headspace some pondering about life. One sometimes runs out of these persons, and heads on a journey for more. 

One would think that, considering the success of social interactions on the internet that new friends are a sentence away in real life if you share common interests. Today I stumble upon a man who shared an uncommon interest with me, or so I hoped. Seated in my art class, I was unbeknownst to the fact that the only male in there was dressed in a hoodie with 'CHILDISH GAMBINO' written on the front and tour dates on the back. I automatically knew that this person liked the rapper enough to go to his live show. That is dedication beyond me because I missed that opportunity. I decided, mistakenly, to attempt to publicly make a friend of this man. 

"Oh!" I exclaimed, "you like Childish Gambino too! That's it, we should be best friends now!" His response did not align with that of which played in my head prior to my brave conversation starter. Instead, he scoffed and continued walking right past me to the back of the classroom and sat amongst four beautiful looking girls and revelled in their presence. These girls shared no musical interests with him at the level that I did. I simply could not fathom how a listener of the musical rebel Childish Gambino would refuse a grandeur offer such as the one I threw at him. Am I that unapproachable? Am I that intolerable? Or is sex still selling?

It is sometimes rather disappointing to believe in the fact that out there, there possibly exists somebody who shares your interests. That you are not alone. Because most of the time, the world proves you wrong through the actions of stereotypically conforming status quo persons who emerge from the depths of capitalism and tempt outcasts like me into an abyss of further loneliness where even despite my strenuous efforts to pull myself out, and despite all the observations I have undertaken displaying human social behaviours, all that I know turns out falsified and I fall back into the abyss.

I shall not let this person ruin my seeking for deep friendships, though. Perhaps I am better off straying from those who wish to converse with persons who look as though they will fall apart at the sneezing of a snail. Perhaps I should aim higher than a person who scoffs at my complimentary remark. Perhaps I will just withdraw into my shell again and stop associating with humankind altogether.

Last Minute Assessment Tasks

Despite the large number of times that I have told myself that I would never again, after spending numerous nights awake until hours too late for a university students, never complete assessment tasks at the last minute, here I am again.

I seem to never learn, and it certainly is not my problem alone. I know a lot of people who cannot complete assessment tasks, assignments, all the same, until the night before they are due. There is some kind of force that compels me to do so, hours before the due date. While I struggle for hours before this damned time, I find myself sailing through when I am sleep-deprived, for reasons that I am unsure of.

I think it is the pressure that drives me. I think that knowing that something is due very soon, in contrast to knowing of a due date of something that is months away is crucial. That is the moment when my brain starts to panic, when my body starts to shiver and when my mind becomes agitated - if only this would happen months earlier, such was the case with an English Book List I devised and most recently, an Artefact Analysis - both quite large tasks and both needing lots of time and both completed at the last minute, inevitably.

I wonder, when I climb even more up the educative ladder, whether this will remain the case. It will be rather stressful, mind you, having to write around five-thousand words at the last minute. I can imagine myself, frantic yet focussed minutes before a major research paper is due - oh, the joy.

And yet I push on. It seems, or it is so, rather, that every essay I have ever written for academic purposes has been conjured up at the last minute. It is no wonder that my body has become so accustomed to sleep deprivation. I can focus better during my days working on only four hours of sleep instead of nights where I acquire over seven hours, which is the 'healthy' amount. Not even coffee can keep me up when I have had my healthy dose of sleep.

It is an interesting matter, completing things at the last minute. It keeps one on edge. It certainly keeps me on edge. And I still have a presentation to organise for tomorrow, even though tomorrow began twenty-six minutes ago, and I still have not showered. My life, it seems, is all last minute based. I tell myself each time that I will be late to my own funeral.

Stickers on Apples

Being a busy university student who must not slice away any time, no pun intended, from travelling to and fro campuses and studying and procrastinating more than studying, I have no time to consume healthy things like apples because if I did I would have to eat them the fast way and that ends with me looking something like a drooling bulldog. 

There is an exception, though, and that is when my mother slices my apple for me and places it ever so neatly in a resealable bag, ensuring its constant freshness until I have a break from my long hours to be able to consume this nutritious snack. And it is cut flawlessly each time, there never is a complaint from my end as I eat it in a fast but ladylike manner, conveniently, and am content with that. Today, however, there was something ill-fated about my sliced apple, and it has nothing to do with the way I consumed it. In fact, it happened just as I was randomly observing it as it moved in its many forms in the resealable bag. 

Today, I found pieces of sticker still intact on two of my apple slices. It appears that my mother had not removed them prior to slicing the apple, for reasons unknown however I highly doubt that it was on purpose because those mistakes should happen to people like Adolf Hitler and his many inhumane assailants. Assailants? Allies? Thieves of innocent lives, nonetheless. 

I was lucky to have removed these stickers before I consumed the apple, of course, and I had a premonition of a possible modern-day Snow White episode though I would not ever compare my mother to that nasty old witch - plus, my mother has far better cooking skills, which would place her even further away from the wicked witch had my mother also been a witch. The wicked witch would have had a lot of competition on MasterChef: Witch Brew season. Needless to say, my mother's apple pies beat Snow White's as well. My mother would be a supreme witch. 

Mothers need to be careful, all jokes aside. This is a pressing matter and capitalist children all over the world should beware of the stickers on apples, for apart from notifying you about the apple's origin, they may also be the reason as to why you will never live to see or eat another apple. 

Awesome Artists

"I'm Damian. 
Or D. 
Or Dude. 
We're going to be drawing all kinds of sh*t. 
Dead sh*t."

There is something about artists of all sorts that simply makes them stand out from those who are not so creative. This is certainly the case with my new art teacher, today.

There were around six of us lined up at the door ten minutes before the class starting time, as Damian walked past. He looked back at us, and shook his head. 
"Early? Really? What is wrong with you, this is university!"
"We're excited!" a student explained.
"Oh you are, are you? Don't worry, I'll change that."
From here on, the class just got even more interesting.
"I'm not going to read the unit guide to you, because well, you're not five-year-olds, and to be honest I didn't even write the unit guide, so I don't even know what's in there. But you will. When you read it yourselves. Alone."
I could not believe how he kept a straight face after everything he said. He said the obscene word used instead of poop to describe everything, in a negative and positive manner. He is so laid back that the class, initially running for three hours, only ended up running for one. 

Damian has taken Mister Schneebly to a whole new different level. Praising Fridays, he hurried on to the large Apple computer and played some music while he went off to do things. We, slightly unsettled, settled in almost immediately. He made everyone bring their tables and desks forward to the computer when he returned so that he could show us examples of Dutch still life paintings, a group of photos that he also did not compile. He did not even think that he would be able to explain them all, however he managed to because, well, it was a collection of photographs of paintings of fruits, anybody could explain them. The way he did though, suggested years of academic study, which I thoroughly enjoyed because it was mixed with an urban style of communication and gritty wit. 

And that is the future teacher that I aim to be. Somebody unique, strange, straight to the point, witty, funny, supportive and all the while intelligent. I want people to look up to me and while they are looking I want their vision to shake because they are uncontrollably laughing at my wit and constant sharing of humour. I will confuse my students with rhetorical questions that actually turn out to be questions and then lead them back on the path of learning by offering them simplistic and secretly complex ways to go about things, to solve things and increase their academic abilities. For to follow the curriculum strictly is to blindly lead, but a leader needs eyes because they are the navigators.

Creative people are interesting. Give them a chance, and the tip of the iceberg will surface revealing a bigger picture, a bigger amount of personality characteristics and do not let them intimidate you. Enjoy them. Because if a creative person pours themselves out onto you like a fountain, drinking from that fountain is more refreshing than spring water. Trust me. There is a lot to creative people. More than meets the eye. We just like to hide because when hidden, we are elusive and comfortable. Sometimes it all becomes too much and we find potential creativity enjoyers. Be a creativity enjoyer more often so people like me can show you our worth. 

I look forward to my second week having this Damian fellow as my art teacher. I do not know what to expect next week, when I have to bring in fragments of my life in object form and arrange them in interesting ways to draw them. It should prove interesting, though the only real form of still life I have ever drawn is a Red Bull can or a bottle of Corona. I think I will do alright, not too exquisitely but rather decently.