Tuesday, September 13, 2005
O Michigan, exemplar of unchecked replication
I'm starting to remember why I've never liked school in the past. Frankly, college is not so much about learning as it is about proving you've learned stuff. Once you've proven you've learned stuff, you forget it all like it was totally meaningless.
Right now I'm trying like hell to get used to my new life. Four weeks ago I was loafing around, watching TV and listening to music all day. Now I have no free time; tomorrow I have class and work from 8:30 AM pretty much until 1:00 AM the following day.
Also I've got this whole editorial cartooning thing. It's harder than I thought it would be. I'm notoriously bad with deadlines, even when I have nothing else going on in my life. I'm supposed to do two cartoons a week for them, and in the three weeks I've worked there I've done half that amount. The problem is mainly that I'm obsessive about quality; I throw away about 80% of the ideas I come up with. The other problem is that I often don't know where prudence lies when writing about controvertial political matters. As I discussed in a previous post, I'm opposed to the idea of looking to mainstream media as a precedent for my writing (both for the sake of originality and for the sake of not succumbing to the shitflinging tendencies to which mass media is prone); but recently I did just that. On assignment to make a cartoon about Hurricane Katrina and faced with a fast-approaching deadline, I simply didn't know what else to do but yet another It's-all-Bush's-fault cartoon. And don't get me wrong, the president's handling of Katrina was atrocious, but I don't feel good about A) oversimplifying a very complex issue and B) self-righteously jumping on one side of this oversimplied issue instead of focusing on the tremendous human suffering that should be vastly more important to us. I suspect I would have responded very differently to this challenge if I had known somebody in New Orleans or had lived there myself.
Well, I'll give myself a little credit and say that I am still learning this craft. My big goal is to try to handle stress and self-doubt better, and I'm doing well at that.
Right now I'm trying like hell to get used to my new life. Four weeks ago I was loafing around, watching TV and listening to music all day. Now I have no free time; tomorrow I have class and work from 8:30 AM pretty much until 1:00 AM the following day.
Also I've got this whole editorial cartooning thing. It's harder than I thought it would be. I'm notoriously bad with deadlines, even when I have nothing else going on in my life. I'm supposed to do two cartoons a week for them, and in the three weeks I've worked there I've done half that amount. The problem is mainly that I'm obsessive about quality; I throw away about 80% of the ideas I come up with. The other problem is that I often don't know where prudence lies when writing about controvertial political matters. As I discussed in a previous post, I'm opposed to the idea of looking to mainstream media as a precedent for my writing (both for the sake of originality and for the sake of not succumbing to the shitflinging tendencies to which mass media is prone); but recently I did just that. On assignment to make a cartoon about Hurricane Katrina and faced with a fast-approaching deadline, I simply didn't know what else to do but yet another It's-all-Bush's-fault cartoon. And don't get me wrong, the president's handling of Katrina was atrocious, but I don't feel good about A) oversimplifying a very complex issue and B) self-righteously jumping on one side of this oversimplied issue instead of focusing on the tremendous human suffering that should be vastly more important to us. I suspect I would have responded very differently to this challenge if I had known somebody in New Orleans or had lived there myself.
Well, I'll give myself a little credit and say that I am still learning this craft. My big goal is to try to handle stress and self-doubt better, and I'm doing well at that.
