A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more you tell the less you know.

Now into the 5th week of school and this semester is flying. I started out wanting to get more involved because I was worried about being bored this year with a lot of my friends gone. But I think I may have overextended myself and gotten too involved. I joined a bunch of stuff at once. I recently joined Trojan Vision, the university news station. I write interview questions for The Cutting Edge, a show that screens student films and then interviews the filmmakers. Some of the films really suck, which makes it more fun because we get to screen them beforehand and mock them incessantly. The people seem to be pretty nice. They do a lot of group outings, like this past Friday we went to a Dodger game. Had to sit in the stratosphere section and spent 45 minutes walking around the parking lot looking for our car afterward, but once I got over my fear of sitting that high up, I had a nice time. 3 people got kicked out for throwing things over the railing. I'm trying to get more involved in AIGA, the graphic design club on campus. I toyed with the idea of having an officer position, but with everything being the way it is, I think it'd be a committment I couldn't take on. I don't want to be so busy that I can't do thing with friends or go out on a weekend if I want to. And I've still got all the sorority things going on and all my classes, so it's turned into a fairly busy semester...which is exactly what I wanted. I'm getting a better idea of how my classes are going to be this semester.

Senior Seminar-We spent the first 3 weeks doing presentations about our own work. I had technical difficulties and half my stuff didn't show up in the powerpoint, but it worked out ok. The class split into 2 classes, basically designers and fine artists, and we've begun to go over everything we need to know in order to graduate and get a job. Last week, the whole class was devoted to resume development, so I think I should be a little better prepared to graduate.

Special Projects for Design- We're working for CBS in this class. We're doing the ad campaign for the Monday Night comedy lineup and also for the Grammy Awards. i would greatly appreciate ANY insight into the grammies. Who's going to win? What's the general feel of it? I havent actually watched the awards for a few years so I'm kinda clueless. I'm mainly freaking out about the comedy stuff though. I have a hell of a time designing for comedy. Dramas are so much easier. With comedy, you have to be funny, but in a way that's very quickly understood and not stupid. I'm drawing a blank so far.

Advertising Media and Analysis- blandest subject matter ever. I have to pump myself full of caffeine before each class to avoid falling asleep and snoring.

Art Theory- generally fun. It's the advanced art theory class here and I'm with mainly all art majors. There's a fair share of dense reading and critiques, but our teacher is kind of eccentric and interesting to listen to.

Digital Video- I like this class a lot. The teacher does tend to show us too many hours of "art films" which I dislike a lot. You can only watch so much Matthew Barney so many times, and once we hit The Karen Carpenter Story acted out entirely with barbie dolls, I knew we'd gone too far. And the class meets in the basement computer lab where it's dark and cozy and I tend to get sleepy. But the assignments we have are really helpful. Right now, I'm working on an "identity video" project. We had to pick something about ourselves and create a 5-10 minute video project. I decided to do it about my Russian heritage and my disconnect to it. I'm thinking of having it in the style of a nostalgic, slow piece and I'd like to do it in the style of a film title sequence. Think "To Kill a Mockingbird" with its retrospect of childhood objects and humming or this http://www.d-kitchen.com/nw/nw_911.html except with more balalaika music.

Other than school, I went to the football game, which has basically turned into an angry mob of students pushing and trampling each other to get into the stadium. The school oversold student seats by 4,000 seats so everyone was panicking. After being squished up against people in line for 2 hours, my friend actually had a panic attack and we decided to leave the line. We waited til the crowd died down and went in, but I don't think I'll be going back to any games if it continues like that. I think i'd rather watch the game from the comfort of my living room than to risk being trambled and then get squished into the student seating area that didn't actually have seats so we all had to stand to watch the 4 hour game. Booo USC football and your money-making schemes.

And yay, this movie is finally coming out! Diane Arbus is one of my absolute favorite photographers, so I'll definintely be seeing this. The poster is really well designed too.