Honestly hands down the worst part of the semester is finals. Midterms are nothing to finals when you are in art school. Midterms are like heres your grade so far you done ________ now lets see how you can improve. The stress comes there cause they are individual meetings and you get a 30 min time slot with are art professor and its the most stressful and awkward thing ever. Literally, thats it though.
When it comes down to finals is when things get crazy. As art majors we are assigned our final projects and they are the biggest project of the semester. We get the longest amount of time to work on them out of any other project we have had to do but they are by far harder then anything else that we will do. Each one of you studio classes gives you a general topic and you are supposed to out in everything that you have gone over the entire semester into one piece. Yes, anything.
For example in my drawing studio last semester before the midterm we drew landscapes and scenes and after we did people and anatomy. Therefor, the final was a person in a landscape.
In my video class this semester which you have seem some work from we started with the basic video software and putting clips together to animation and recording performance art. For this class my final is to do whatever you want with the skill you learn and it is going to be either 25% OR 35% of my final grade for the class. I can't tell you what I am doing yet because I will be posting it later and I want it to be a surprise.
For my surface class we have focused on color, composition, presentation, physical positioning, historical context, and also on top of all of that make a piece that could help us in our future major. Whew, I think I got it all in there. We have to do all of that in ONE PIECE for our final piece. I actually have finished this piece and will be posting it later so check back!!
Anyways to conclude my post I would like to give you some study tips that while may seem simple but really do help.
- Reward yourself. After a certain amount of set time take a break, go outside, watch a youtube video. Or you could also reward yourself with candy. Go by yourself a bag of little treats and at the end of every page eat one, or after a certain number of problems or time spent, eat one
- As easy as this one sounds it is probably the hardest thing ever. DON'T procrastinate. We all do it and there is no shame in that but when it comes down to finals, girl that is not the way to go.
- Start studying a few days before the exam, not the just the night before. This helps you to not end up stressing big time. If you wait till the night before to study and entire semesters worth of stuff most likely your brain is going to fried before you are even halfway done. A few nights before start by just skimming your note and looking over old homework and test. That way when you actually go to study the night or two nights before you will have some main ideas on what to do.
- Also another thing that seems simple but that many people don't think about. The more sleep you get the night before the better that you will do. If you are sleep deprived and coffee deprived most likely your focus won't be on the test but on how tired you are. This kinda goes off of the one before. If you wait tilt eh last night to study you all most likely be up later then if you had started studying a few nights before.
- This tips works for some people more then others. Use color in your notes. Wether you color code for different classes or just make them bright and colorful in general. I'm in college and type all my notes and I still do this. I think it makes your note more enjoyable because staring at your handwriting in grey pencil for page after page can get boring and hard to focus on.
- Make sure before you go to the test that you have everything that you could possible need. No one needs to get to your test or exam and found out that you left your pencil or extra paper at home.
Anyways I hope that my tips helped and that you will be able to use some of them in the future. Sorry I haven't had many picture post recently. Much like I said above the end of the semester is the worst and the busiest so after I am done with all of my classes I will be taking some more pictures to post!!
XOXO
Liz