Friday, 10 June 2005 | Results

The graphic design class I'm taking is fun, so far. It reminds me a little of kindergarten. Yesterday we were told to make something out of basic shapes, by moving them around in Illustrator. Fernando make a clown face (it was originally meant to be a dog, but it didn't work out), Kate made a flower in a vase, and I made a robot with a speech bubble. The robot was obvious, but I preemptively explained the speech bubble part, because it was composed of a pitiful, single black triangle. It actually looked more like an arrow pointing at my robot's head: There it is! There's my robot.

On Tuesday, the first day of class, there were only four of us, and no professor. While we waited, we introduced ourselves, explained why we were there, and talked about school and work. At one point, two of us left the classroom (separately) on reconnaissance missions, but neither returned with an instructor. Should we go back to work? Ferdinand wondered out loud. How long should we wait?

I pictured a scenario in which we used the time constructively, to teach each other things we happen to know a lot about, like maybe Italian, or juggling, or karate. I'm not sure what I would've taught, but it didn't matter, because I had no intention of letting that idea leave my brain. Instead, when we ran out of things to say, we turned toward our monitors and opened browsers.

At 30 minutes, we learned that our entire course had been canceled. At an hour, three of us were in the office of the head of the department, offering a friendly complaint. And less than one hour after that, the course was (miraculously) reinstated.