THESIS

I've been absent from writing for a while!  School is done (graduation is on Sunday!) and I've been working a lot this last week to make a couple of extra dollars before the summer.  I've been thinking a lot about what I want my blog to be, what I want my life to be, and a lot about graduating in general.  I should be writing about it soon enough.

In the meantime, here's my SENIOR THESIS. 

It's been really difficult thinking about my thesis now that it's over.  I've been having a lot of thoughts and a lot of conversations about it, but not as many as I would like.  I spent a lot of time and energy and emotion on my thesis, and feel a little off kilter now that it's over and done with.  I don't think about it much anymore, but when I do, I feel a strange mix of emotion that I've never before felt about an art piece of mine.

After spending so much time on it, I wish I could talk to more people about my work.  I feel a kind of dissatisfaction, as I feel almost unable to speak with anyone about my thesis.  It's over and done with, and I feel that if I was to initiate a conversation with someone about it, I would not get the response that I would necessarily want.  I've talked a lot with Brian about it, recently, and he's helped me put my thoughts in order quite a bit.  However, since he was such a big part of the process and development of ideas, he isn't the kind of perspective I was hoping to engage for a critique.  Or a conversation of sorts.

That lack of conversation also seems to coincide with the sense of dissatisfaction I felt with the work for a while.  I felt strangely detached and disappointed in myself and the work, as if I had not just achieved something great.  The lack of feedback lead me to believe I had not achieved the goal I seemingly had set out to accomplish.  However, I still cannot pinpoint what I had subconsciously hoped to achieve with the work.  It drew an emotional response from people, and they were able to tell the story from the images and text I presented.  I suppose that detached feeling was from thinking about the work for so long, and then it suddenly and finally being finished.  Months and months of thought and deliberation ending in that show.  Then it was done.  Later that week, I took down all the pieces from the wall and now they are sitting in my drawer in the print labs.

As I drove home from critique, all those pieces were sitting in my lap.  I had a thought: "This is months and months of work, just sitting here.  If something happened, these could be gone.  And then the culmination of those months and months would not exist any longer."  It was a tad morbid, to say the least.  I don't know if I'll feel differently about it, eventually.  I honestly have no idea.

Either way, I'm extremely proud of what I've done.  My thesis is the largest body of work I've ever produced under one idea and in the time frame.  It is the largest work I have ever imagined and then executed.  It is the first step towards what I hope to do one day.  My thesis is, partially, a culmination of all my years in college and in high school.  As I edited the photos to go in the catalogue, I got a wave of pride again.  Pride in myself, for sticking with and achieving my initial goal and idea.  Pride in myself for executing the pieces, and pride that I kept my head towards the end and stopped freaking out over it all.  I knew what I was doing, and I did it.  I spent a long while stressing out about the execution, but when it finally came down to it, I was able to pull through. 

Thinking back on it now as I write this... I am so, so proud of myself.

xxTanya

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