Taking creative-based classes can be a bit daunting at times-- Almost your entire grade is project-based, you're constantly being forced to come up with new material, and you may always experience creative burnout at some point if you're taking more than one at a time. Which I did. But I regret nothing. Why? Well, first, here's a brief description of my drawing final this week:
My professor had brought muffins. MUFFINS. And juice......which is one of those things that I will never understand: Juice does not go with other sweet foods. It just doesn't. Because after eating something sweet, like, oh, I don't know, a MUFFIN, the juice just tastes sour and gross. And yet people still continue to pair the beverage with cake-like breakfast foods and other sugary delicacies all the time. And it bugs me.
But anyways, the muffins. The muffins were great. And we didn't have any final drawings due. All we had to do was email our portfolio of work to him the night before, and then we would look at the pictures with him in another room and talk about how we did...and our feelings. And stuff. And due to my last name's glorious placement in the alphabet, I got to go first. It took maybe five minutes, and then I got to leave (after grabbing another muffin like the classy woman I am).
Brilliant, right? BUT IT GETS BETTER: (How much better, you ask? Well, this was my approximate reaction).
On the last day of class before my creative writing final, our professor asked us a series of questions-- 10, to be exact. Here are the questions:
1. Write a grammatical sentence that describes you in 6 words or less.
2. Describe a recurring dream you had.
3. Describe something you fear without naming it.
4. Name and describe a beautiful thing.
5. Write something you know to be true.
6. Write a three word sentence.
7. Write a sentence that begins with the word "but."
8. Write a metaphor/simile without naming the object you're describing.
9. Write "They say," followed by an aphorism.
10. Describe a plant or animal.
As he read these to us, we had a few moments in between each of them to write something down. After that, he told us to rearrange them in a specific sequence. This is what my list looked like after that:
2. Mundane things I think are real.
4. Long roads lined with old trees that create a tunnel.
6. Bigfoot is real.
8. It's almost like running into that person you've been avoiding.
10. Sloths are actually really creepy and I don't understand why people like them so much.
9. They say "distance makes the heart grow fonder."
7. But Sasquatch isn't.
5. People are confusing.
3. Buzzing, stinging, furry bodies.
1. I'm more strange than I seem.
Then we were assigned to make this into a poem for the final. We had to keep the ideas of each line the same, but were free to add, subtract, or edit them as we wished. Cool, right? But then we found out that it wasn't going to be graded. And THEN we found out that the final was going to be a potluck. So basically we were going to sit around and eat a bunch of food and read crazy poetry together. It doesn't get much better than this, my friends.
Oh, and this is what my poem ended up looking like:
When I sleep I dream of mundane things, but when awake I long for
Never-ending roads lined with old trees that create a tunnel, where
Bigfoot is real.
It'll be almost like running into that person you've been avoiding.
Sloths are actually really creepy and I don't understand why people like them, but I hope
It is true when they say "distance makes the heart grow fonder."
But Sasquatch wouldn't know. And
People are just confusing. And
Buzzing, stinging, furry bodies will keep on haunting my dreams.
I'm stranger than I seem.
Yep. I have no idea what it means. Although, years from now, if this somehow became a famous work of early 21st century literature, I'm sure the meaning would be disputed by literary scholars from dawn until dusk, with every word and placement decision being analyzed for hidden depth and meaning, and high school students would be looking it up online in a desperate attempt to find out what it means at 2 in the morning when they have a paper due the next day.
And I'd leave a note somewhere for people to find after I die that would say, "Hey. You guys? You know that poem I wrote? Yeah, the one with all the Bigfoot references? Totally made up. Completely. No meanings at all. So just stop torturing the children. Please."
Anyway, I really have no idea what the point of this post was, either. I suppose I just wanted to share my awesome randomly generated poetry...and the fact that my finals were the best things ever. Something like that.
Don't read too much into it.
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