one more down, and a whole lot of ranting

• Well I finished fall quarter at SCAD-Atlanta on Thursday the 19th. Needless to say it's a big load off my shoulders . . . at least for a little while. I took Project Seminar II, which is a class where you decide what you want your project to be and use the whole quarter (10weeks) to complete it in. It's obviously my favorite class hahahaha. . . . I also took Documentary Photography, which I would not recommend anyone taking cause I hated it. My teacher was the same teacher I had for Seminar II so I had her for two classes and she was a HORRIBLE teacher. Besides having an awful teacher the class was just stupid and completely useless. There was also History of Photography I. I took History of Photography II during spring quarter online, aparently they don't care in what order you learn history as long as you learn it. History I wasn't that bad. Actually the best history class I've ever had. The teacher didn't care if we learned stuff or not or if we payed attention. He gave us the test two weeks before we actually take it to memorize exactly whats on it and in the exact order. However we had to hand write all of it! So that was a huge pain in the butt!!! Your hand would be sore for the rest of the day, cause your pretty much hand writing a 20 page paper during class. I am extremely happy to say though that I only have 4 more classes to take before I graduate! WOO HOO! I can the light at the end of the tunnel. . . I am so ready to get out of SCAD. Yes I am glad that I got to go here because it looks great on a resume and I got to learn all the technical things in a class instead of trying to learning them on my own from a book or the internet. But just because SCAD is an art school doesn't mean that it enhances your creativity. In fact it's just about killed mine.

• You have to understand the kind of people at SCAD. The small groups of weird, nerdy, artsie, freaky people that you went to high school with are now the majority. You would think that anyone could fit in but it's quite the opposite in the strangest way. I am segregated because I don't own anything from rue21, pacsun, or wetseal. I don't do drugs of any kind (and yes the stereotype that most art students do drugs is very true! and their very open about it). And you would not believe the amount of nude people you see; from life size drawings of people hanging in the halls, to actual nude photographs that students took for a project or are showing a photographers work that has influenced them. I do not look at porn, I do not look at nude art photographs and I certainly do not want to see what someone I know and have to see almost everyday looks like naked! Yes there is a difference between porn and nudes but that line is thin! There are people that are very close to that line and some that I feel have crossed it, but in the world or art everything is personal opinion. I guess I am just much more discreet about my body and showing it off to the freakin world. lol. So yea I feel like in the past couple of quarters SCAD is becoming over run with drugs, nudity and sex. O yes people SEX! It was disgusting! A student made a multimedia piece (for those of you who don't know what that means it's photos put with sound and sometimes a short clip thrown in there) for a project and took pictures of people doing drugs, getting drunk, and having sex. Another student took photographs of people shooting up heroin for a project. But that's not even the worst of it. . . teachers show us examples of other photographers work and we normally have to give a presentation in all our classes of one or more photographers who have influenced us. Those are where it gets really bad. Photos of people having sex are always disgusting to me but the worst one that I think was shown was Thomas Ruff. This man no longer takes photos, he now downloads porn off the internet and blurs it and calls it art. I'm sorry I can still tell what's going on in the photographs. It's still porn!!! Another extremely disgusting image we were shown in a different class was a picture of a guy snorting cocaine off another guys penis! I'm sorry but that is not art, that isn't anything but incredibly indecent, crude, filthy, vile, disguesting and many other words that I could type but I think you get my point!

• Now I hate to use titles such as normal to label people, but it's the best way for me to explain my point. In my life, my world, where I come from I am normal. I shop at Old Navy, department stores, Kholes, Target, etc. I wear flip flops or my New Balance tennieshoes all the time. I listen to r&b, rap, hip hop, pop, country, and rock. So just those few things right there, being at SCAD I am no longer the norm. I'm the person that's out of place. I also don't have a tattoo so that automatically makes me the weird one. I've got nothing against tattoo's, I know lots of people that have them and I even want one. I don't have one right now and that's all they notice.

• So because of my looks I am segregated by my fellow students but because of how I think and feel I am segregated my my teachers. The student who takes self nude photos will get an A but I can take pictures of landscapes, architecture, nature, or found objects, put in just as much work if not more into my project and get a B. Simply because I didn't do something profoundly deep, conceptual or in my terms CREEPY!

• So it's pretty obvious that I am ready to get out of SCAD. I love that I have gotten the chance to learn all the technical aspects of photography in a classroom with other people and not have to stuggle trying to figure it out on my own cause I could have never done it. I'm sure my teachers are ready for me to graduate because we butt heads on a weekly basis because I stand by my values and beliefs. Being graded on something by someones personal opinion is almost demoralizing and I'm sick of it.