My Pursuit of Happiness.

Remember a few weeks ago when I told you I'd be taking two classes about design and layout?

After two Saturdays of classes, I can officially say: I LOVE IT.

I do.

Despite having to be awake early on a Saturday, despite having 4.5 hours of class on a Saturday, despite having homework again - I'm absolutely in love with taking a class about elements of art and design.

I love being back in the classroom.
I love learning again.
I love having ART as homework.
I love meeting people.
I love doing something just for me.

I love my professior - who went to the Cleveland Institute of Art, a wonderful school, and is currently working for a successful advertising firm as a graphic designer. It's so rewarding to have someone who's a successful graphic designer give us his pointers about starting a career in the field. It's so exciting to have someone take me and my lil' unassuming ambitions seriously.

Plus - there's another girl in the class who has had an eerily similar path: we both graduated from Catholic universities in southwest Ohio, thought we'd teach, realized it wasn't for us, started working at a college in northeast Ohio, and then decided to start taking classes in graphic design. So, that's kind of neat. In a class where most people don't have their degrees yet and many are just out of high school - it's kind of reassuring to see somewhere nearly exactly where I am.

The first two weeks of class, we've had to create compositions based on two of the elements of design and two of the principles of design.

I hauled my scrapbooking/art/old tissue paper/etc out of the closet and now the living room's a complete mess, but I'm thrilled, because: I GET TO BE CREATIVE FOR HOMEWORK. Whee!

Listening to Bill, Barack, Sarah, and John from the comfort of my living room floor, as I'm hunched over my watercolors, magazines strewn about me, scraps of construction paper sticking to my knees and elbows, my back aching, yet I'm nothing less than completely happy.

[That is, until I show Mike my masterpiece and he does anything less than jump up and down, lauding me with praise. Then I sulk and insist, "You don't liiiiike it!"]