started course today, never went too well... hmmm....

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well i started my art school course today. it didn't go too well. the whole thing seemed very vague to me, and to make matters worse, all of the people on the course seem to know each other because i am starting in the second year of the course. it means they all seem to know things about the school that i dont, and i am very reluctant to speak out and ask in front of 20 other people whom i dont know.

i ended up leaving early, as it started to get slightly difficult to handle. i would go back in, but i am not sure i would no what to do there. its all quite vague.

to make matters worse, last week we were in at the induction day, at which time we all claimed a space in the studio, basically a chair and a bit of desk, with a set of drawers under it. when i went in today, someone had put a load of stuff in my drawer. this sort of set things off to a bad start, and now i'm worried that since i've left early, the person who's stuff this is is going to try and sit in my space, since the class is somewhat overcrowded and space seems to be at a premium.

also, the people who are sitting around me seem somewhat reluctant to talk to me, although admittedly i have made little or no effort to speak to them... but i get a sense of some kind of "standoffishness", since they seem to know each other quite well.

i am worried the course in general is going to be too vague for me. i get the impression that we are largely left to our own devices a lot of the time.

so i'm sort of freaking out a bit here. am i overreacting? has anyone any tips or advice? it would be much appreciated...

I had a similar experience when I took a philosophy of art course in uni. I sat there completely mystified as to what we were supposed to be talking about and all the references that people were making. It didn't seem to be about art at all. I had never had such a confusing experience in any course before that, except math which I'm terribly bad at.

The prof seemed to be teaching to a select number of people who did all the talking, while the rest of us sat in silence. I found out later the prof would "party" with this select number of people. Probably filling them in on necessary information the rest of us weren't in on.

I'm still confused about that one.

If you are starting in second year it might be that you've missed some very necessary courses and information along the way, and that you need more prerequisites.

for the last two years i did GCSE art, and for the first 10-12 lesson i sat there completely and uttery lost as to ehat i was meant to do. I thought it was strange that we were not told what we had to do evryone just knew. it turned out that the lesson was a very open structure were you were given a theme and then you had to do somthing around that theme.

so, if i were you i would either e-mail / talk on my own to the tutor and ask if she can out line a process, after i did this with my teacher things became alot simplir.

hope this helps, and please let us know how you get on.

licks

jammie & lion

thanks for your replies people.

anandamide:

its not so much that i've missed stuff from the first year as such, at least not in the academic sense. the problem is more that the course seems quite unstructured, as art courses usually are, and because everyone else seems to know each other, i am just sitting there unsure what to do with myself.
sounds like a case of a bad tutor with your philosophy of art course, sorry to hear about that and i hope it worked out ok in the end.
the tutors on this course actually seem very good, but i'm not actually sure if they are aware of the fact i have AS. i had spoken to the relevant people in the student support department before i came here, who said they would notify them, but they've not mentioned anything to me, and i'm somehow reluctant to bring the matter up with them.

jammie:

yes i think that is indeed partly the problem. maybe a chat with the course leader could help in that respect.

the main problem i foresee though is in trying to get to know my classmates, today i just felt like i was somewhere i shouldn't have been, and i had no idea what i was supposed to be doing, while everybody else were all chatting away in little groups and seemed to know what was going on.
oh well, i'll go back tomorrow and see how it goes... can't get any worse i suppose. hahaha

thanks again for your advice folks.

well things seem to be looking up. today was a much better day, was talking to a few of my classmates, and seem to be getting on well with the tutor as well. there are a couple of projects on the go now as well, so i have things to do when the social side of the whole thing seems like too much. so perhaps i was overreacting a bit.