Wow! My life this, in the space of a handful of days, become the polar opposite of the life I've been leading during my summer vacation. It's like plunging into a cold pool in the middle of the summer - bracing and a bit of a shock, but invigorating.

I began my new semester of classes this week. I've been asked to be the new student liason for Source Ministries, which means being the contact person and coordinator for the Branches club on campus. My friend Chris wants to do some gaming again like we did last semester, though he appreciates that I don't really have the time to do any DMing right now - board games would be great, too, in his opinion. And I would like to keep on meeting with Patrick every week.

Add to that homework, my part-time job at Northwestern Bookstore, church, and, of course, keeping on top of apartment chores and having a relationship with my lovely wife, and it sounds a bit hectic. The key, I think, is going to be taking it one day at a time. After sitting around all summer doing little to nothing (my own fault, obviously), it feels like a very welcome change.

Not that I didn't enjoy my summer, mind you. It's just that one gets spoiled, and one begins to feel oneself spoiling.

This semester, I have no classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Tuesdays at noon will be our Branches meetings, but that's only about an hour, and then I'm off to work by 1:30.

Here are the classes I had yesterday:

Mon. 9:30am-12:00pm - Drawing One: Observation. The dreaded Observation Drawing class rears its head once again, but this time it's not a Foundation class. It's required for Comic Art majors, nonetheless, and with good reason. I know the value of the class, it's just that staring at bottles and drapes while standing for hours on end loses its novelty more quickly than you might imagine. Fortunately, it looks as if this class will be better than the Foundation class, in my estimation. First, I've got a friend from my Learning & Teaching class last semester, Diane, who is in it. For those of you who are familiar with my references, she reminds me a lot of Kristen Bethel/Glenn. She and another fellow in class, Ryan, are both in Branches. So that's quite cool. Additionally, instead of one five-hour studio class a week, it's two two-and-a-half hour classes a week, which makes it much more bearable. The standing really gets to one's spine... Diane tells me that she has had our teacher before, and she assures me that she's a good teacher. I enjoyed my first session with her; she was willing to demonstrate for me exactly what she wants me to do, on my paper. That helps quite a bit - I tend to zone out during slide presentations when she delves into technical language. That's not really good, but I'm more of a visual/doing learner - go figure.

Mon. 1:00pm-6:00pm - Special Topics: Comic Book Publishing. This class is taught by my new student advisor, Barb (whose last name escapes me at the moment). Apparently, I'm the only student in there who hasn't taken Comics 2. It's a prerequisite for the class, but they let me in because I'm taking Comics 2 this semester. One of the main projects we'll be working on is taking a comic of our own creation and seeing it through the publication process - everything from choosing the materials and coloring and graphic design of the cover and pages through the printing process to marketing. It should be great, except there's one hitch - since I don't have a small body of work from taking Comics 2 yet, I'm going to have to produce something to work with by midterm at the latest. Fortunately, Barb agreed to let me do this with my Rome comic that I'm doing for Comic Heads Presents, thus killing two birds with one stone. For the second half of class, we had to go to a comic book store and take notes on the comic designs, making note of what worked and what didn't, and perhaps even making some purchases.

I love going to art school.