Darkris: The Student
Yesterday (Wednesday) was my first day of university since 1999. It's been a long time between drinks. I arrived early, but was late to class as I was ushered into the 'auditorium' for a talk by a woman from a paper company that runs a competition for design students every year, by the admissions officer. It went something like this:
"Hi, you must be Nick. Do you have 10 minutes to spare?"
At this point I looked at my watch, and discerned that I only had EXACTLY 10 minutes before my very first class.
"Oh, I don't know, I have class at 1:30.."
"Oh, that's fine, I wouldn't want you to miss out on a chance to win $3,000 on your first day."
At this point I picture my eyes lighting up like dollarsigns and I follow her like an obedient zombie. I then sat through a 20 minute, mind-numbing talk about how I can compete against students all across the nation that are involved in design courses. I didn't have the balls to blow off the talk and walk out, so I sat there, taking in the sights of the assemble, as I tried to ascertain what kind of age range I was faced with.
Ok, the thought of winning $3,000 for designing something was fairly inviting, however, trying to juggle this competition (which was so obviously a marketing campaign by the paper company), my schooling and my fulltime job, not to mention my private life, seemed a little difficult. Perhaps next year if I have time, because I will still technically be a 1st year student ;)
So I finally get to my class (Computer Graphic Skills 1) and I get stuck with the shitty eMac where it is conveniently located next to the printer and an even shittier old lime-green iMac. Not only is it hard to see the projector screen, but it is hard to see the whiteboard for notes, and I'm by myself. Talk about incentives for being to class on time. I'm gonna get there 10 minutes early next week! Lol. I hope they don't have allocated seats :-/ I'll just throw my 'mature-age student' weight around. Lol.
The class was pretty good, we were working in Illustrator (version 10, ugh) and we were just going through all the basic tools and skills. I didn't think I'd learn anything, however, much to my surprise, I was able to memorise something from class that I can never seem to remember. When you apply text to a path, be it an ellipse or a rectangle and you want to change the location of the text, all you do is select the 'static I tool' you know, like the cursor you see in Word when you are typing something up. This will appear on the path, and when you have the selection tool selected, you will see this and be able to drag it (and the text) to where you want it. Simple, huh?
Anyway, the highlight of this first class was when a second year student came in and had to work on the iMac to fiddle with some work. After much fussing (he was a bit of an attention seeker :P ) he brings something up on the screen and gets my attention with "Psst! Check this out, whaddya think?"
After successfully breaking my concentration, I felt it only fair that I actually look at what he was showing me. On the screen was some tag text that said something like "Battle of the Year" it looked quite impressive, as I can't really do that kind of thing. So I asked him what I think must be my stock standard question: "Did you do that by hand?"
He replied with a snort, a guffaw and then said: "Nah man! All Illustrator!"
He then went on to say, and this is the funny part: "It's ok, when you learn how to use the Pen tool, you'll be able to do stuff like this too."
LOL
At this point I smiled inwardly and went back to my work. What a moron. That comment was definitely the highlight of my day to that point. This same guy thought I was only 20, which was nice of him.
Anyway, the second class was a guest speaker, the Editor of DG (formerly Design Graphics) Magazine, Colin Wood. This went for 1.5 hours, and it was good to listen to him, but it should have only gone for an hour. The last half hour or so was question time, and the class asked questions that they had prepared the week before and some spontaneous questions. Some of the questions were silly, like "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" This guy would be between the ages of 50 and 65, so a question like this doesn't really receive an interesting question. It would have been ok to ask this kind of question later, one on one, but I just thought a question like "How is DG magazine seen worldwide, and what kind of impact do you think the magazine has on the design industry as a whole?" would have been a better one. Maybe it's just me.
After school it was a mad-dash to get to basketball on time. I had to get from Footscray to Coburg in 40 mins, in peak-hour traffic and on the night of the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games. Good luck.
I made it there in 20 minutes! That has to be a record! Anyway, we only had 5 because Bren and Chief couldn't make it, that means we're in for a painful game as they are our two top scorers. Fuck.
We managed to play a very decent game, most of the luck was going our way and Anthony just wasn't missing his shots. Handy. Then it happened, two minutes into the second half, the first casualty of Gino's reffing, Lukey was fouled off. We managed to see-saw the lead a couple of times and hang in there. With 5 minutes to go, the second, and biggest blow of the game came when our only big man, Stuey DeLange was fouled off. Oh crap.
We ran the game with 3 guys, Tayls, Gruj and Viney and we managed to run away with a 2 point victory! Unheard of! The guys played spectacularly well in very, very tough conditions. This would have to go down as one of the best games we have won, mentally and physically, in the last year. This team, Zukes, beat the Anti-Raptors by 4 points (55-51, holy fuck!)
Hopefully the RMIT Giants lost last night, as this will put us on equal points going into next weeks game when we play each other. Then we just have to buckle up for the last 15 games of the season (yipe!) and try to knock Flemington Magic out of second so that we can beat the Anti-Raptors in the final and run away with our much deserved premiership.
After all that, I got home, had a little grub and passed out on the couch. Man, going back to school is going to be cool! :D
"Hi, you must be Nick. Do you have 10 minutes to spare?"
At this point I looked at my watch, and discerned that I only had EXACTLY 10 minutes before my very first class.
"Oh, I don't know, I have class at 1:30.."
"Oh, that's fine, I wouldn't want you to miss out on a chance to win $3,000 on your first day."
At this point I picture my eyes lighting up like dollarsigns and I follow her like an obedient zombie. I then sat through a 20 minute, mind-numbing talk about how I can compete against students all across the nation that are involved in design courses. I didn't have the balls to blow off the talk and walk out, so I sat there, taking in the sights of the assemble, as I tried to ascertain what kind of age range I was faced with.
Ok, the thought of winning $3,000 for designing something was fairly inviting, however, trying to juggle this competition (which was so obviously a marketing campaign by the paper company), my schooling and my fulltime job, not to mention my private life, seemed a little difficult. Perhaps next year if I have time, because I will still technically be a 1st year student ;)
So I finally get to my class (Computer Graphic Skills 1) and I get stuck with the shitty eMac where it is conveniently located next to the printer and an even shittier old lime-green iMac. Not only is it hard to see the projector screen, but it is hard to see the whiteboard for notes, and I'm by myself. Talk about incentives for being to class on time. I'm gonna get there 10 minutes early next week! Lol. I hope they don't have allocated seats :-/ I'll just throw my 'mature-age student' weight around. Lol.
The class was pretty good, we were working in Illustrator (version 10, ugh) and we were just going through all the basic tools and skills. I didn't think I'd learn anything, however, much to my surprise, I was able to memorise something from class that I can never seem to remember. When you apply text to a path, be it an ellipse or a rectangle and you want to change the location of the text, all you do is select the 'static I tool' you know, like the cursor you see in Word when you are typing something up. This will appear on the path, and when you have the selection tool selected, you will see this and be able to drag it (and the text) to where you want it. Simple, huh?
Anyway, the highlight of this first class was when a second year student came in and had to work on the iMac to fiddle with some work. After much fussing (he was a bit of an attention seeker :P ) he brings something up on the screen and gets my attention with "Psst! Check this out, whaddya think?"
After successfully breaking my concentration, I felt it only fair that I actually look at what he was showing me. On the screen was some tag text that said something like "Battle of the Year" it looked quite impressive, as I can't really do that kind of thing. So I asked him what I think must be my stock standard question: "Did you do that by hand?"
He replied with a snort, a guffaw and then said: "Nah man! All Illustrator!"
He then went on to say, and this is the funny part: "It's ok, when you learn how to use the Pen tool, you'll be able to do stuff like this too."
LOL
At this point I smiled inwardly and went back to my work. What a moron. That comment was definitely the highlight of my day to that point. This same guy thought I was only 20, which was nice of him.
Anyway, the second class was a guest speaker, the Editor of DG (formerly Design Graphics) Magazine, Colin Wood. This went for 1.5 hours, and it was good to listen to him, but it should have only gone for an hour. The last half hour or so was question time, and the class asked questions that they had prepared the week before and some spontaneous questions. Some of the questions were silly, like "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" This guy would be between the ages of 50 and 65, so a question like this doesn't really receive an interesting question. It would have been ok to ask this kind of question later, one on one, but I just thought a question like "How is DG magazine seen worldwide, and what kind of impact do you think the magazine has on the design industry as a whole?" would have been a better one. Maybe it's just me.
After school it was a mad-dash to get to basketball on time. I had to get from Footscray to Coburg in 40 mins, in peak-hour traffic and on the night of the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games. Good luck.
I made it there in 20 minutes! That has to be a record! Anyway, we only had 5 because Bren and Chief couldn't make it, that means we're in for a painful game as they are our two top scorers. Fuck.
We managed to play a very decent game, most of the luck was going our way and Anthony just wasn't missing his shots. Handy. Then it happened, two minutes into the second half, the first casualty of Gino's reffing, Lukey was fouled off. We managed to see-saw the lead a couple of times and hang in there. With 5 minutes to go, the second, and biggest blow of the game came when our only big man, Stuey DeLange was fouled off. Oh crap.
We ran the game with 3 guys, Tayls, Gruj and Viney and we managed to run away with a 2 point victory! Unheard of! The guys played spectacularly well in very, very tough conditions. This would have to go down as one of the best games we have won, mentally and physically, in the last year. This team, Zukes, beat the Anti-Raptors by 4 points (55-51, holy fuck!)
Hopefully the RMIT Giants lost last night, as this will put us on equal points going into next weeks game when we play each other. Then we just have to buckle up for the last 15 games of the season (yipe!) and try to knock Flemington Magic out of second so that we can beat the Anti-Raptors in the final and run away with our much deserved premiership.
After all that, I got home, had a little grub and passed out on the couch. Man, going back to school is going to be cool! :D
