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A full week, and what a week. Since the last time I blogged so much has happened. Last Sunday we went down to santa cruz to try and get our heads straight about a possible plan of attack of what to do next. At the moment the looosest version of the plan looks like this. When I finish in may we will drive back across country and set up a temporary base, at my parents house on Sullivan's island south carolina , and spend the summer planning a wedding and working part time. Brooke might be going to a couple field schools this summer and I would probably take the time to work on some writing and make some work in charleston, most likely in the redux prints studio, since they have such an affordable monthly rate. I am pretty sure I can find some temporary work, and I still have all the pieces from the rust never sleeps show in storage in charleston , so maybe i can sell those there. I have been working and procrastinating over my residency application and will probably finish that this weekend. I have been trying not to be depressed about being 30 with no real prospects and a tremendous amount of debt, and for the most part I really am not that depressed. One of the highlights of this week that lifted me from my depression was meeting Richard Lou. Richard Lou is one of the candidates they are interviewing to be the department chair here at San Jose State. He was incredibly insightful and brought a tremendous presence to a very academically depressed department. At the moment the school is running leaderless, and has been for the last 3 years. This has led to an environment where the professors and staff spend their time defending their tired old academic positions,and preserving their comfort by refusing to change or budge on their beliefs, no matter how misguided. This experience has reinforced the fact that the greatest victims of a leaderless directionless academic department are the students. The reality is that most academics are selfish, and self serving and care very little for the success of their students and their department, they are just focused on what is comfortable for them. This can be great, when their is competent leadership in place, but when there is no competent neutral leadership things can go to shit fast, and imagine three years with no leadership, no revision of curriculum and several medium specific out of touch artistic has-beens running the ship, and you have the equivalent of the inmates running the asylum. This is the condition that i have gone to graduate school under. Not to say this hasn't been without it's high points, many times what the faculty and grad students around here have taught me is what not to do. The point is this Richard Lou had so much to offer but alas he is probably too smart and visionary for this place. I sound like the classic jaded grad student and to some extent that is what I am. I suspect i would have encountered the same thing, in any department with out a clear direction or leader and a graduate curriculum that has not been revised in over ten years, so that makes me lucky since i probably shouldn't have gone to graduate school in the first place and here I got to go to graduate school in such a divisive environment. This has truly been an experience of learning between the lines, now if I can just mind my own business for the next month and a half it will all be over.
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