Career day was a really nice glance into my time at Palomar, it really helped me to get a feel for the kind of I work would go on to do for Bo. It also helped me begin to put my internship into perspective, as it hadn't yet settled in. I also got to see the classroom and get re-familiarized with the campus. I arrived at the campus at our scheduled meeting time, which was a bit later in the day around 1:00, and I met up with my mentor, Bo Kim. We hadn't spoken face-to-face since I had taken his class last year, and since then he had suffered a stroke which left him without much function on the left side of his body. He said that the timing of my internship was perfect in it's alignment with the end of the semester as there was a lot of grading to be done. Career day definitely gave me some much needed confidence in my plan for internship, and I really felt more ready to take on the challenge.
Bo described the typical work day as falling into several categories: during the week, most work goes into facilitating and directing the class, lecturing sometimes but mostly critiquing and moving the class as the students work, and during weekends we would come in to grade the finished assignments and organize the work. There is no formal dress code at Palomar, which I find very relaxing and it removes a very small stress from my day, however I'm obviously expected to look at least decent. I don't think it's ever really comfortable to feel under dressed, so I went to career day in more business casual attire just in case.
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My internship final project ended up being 3 different types of tasks actually, small but I hope they really think they made a positive impact on the classroom and my mentor.
Firstly, I finished a group PowerPoint presentations which serve more as a reference guide for students, containing art terminology and photo examples to describe each term. There are now in 2 types of these presentations, and 11 presentations in total. 9 of them concern only drawing/painting terminology, and 2 that tackle more general art terms, technical and otherwise (ie. composition, perspective, and eras/genres of art). I came in on the weekends frequently to help grade the pieces submitted by the different classes Bo teaches. I really feel like I gained more knowledge of how work is judged by not only a teacher, but someone who wishes to help others succeed. It's not about giving someone a free pass when you know they can do better, it's about rewarding the struggle of someone who is putting in the time and dedication to improve themselves. I really admire this about my mentor, he doesn't grade solely based on the subjective appeal of a drawing or painting, but mostly he considers the person's effort and dedication to the craft and what he knows they can do. Several times while we were grading, he asked me what I would give the student. I found that I tended to want to give higher grades to the most aesthetic looking pieces, but Bo made me realize that several of those pieces were made very quickly, while the ones that garnered the highest praise from Bo were pictures that clearly had thought and time invested in them. My job during classes was to always be available to assist, and to clean/organize the storage area. I was also able to add my commentary during critique sessions (which was super fun and everybody was really constructive, just an awesome atmosphere), and I could also familiarize myself with the schedule. After the semester was over, and the class parted ways, the classroom was left preeetty trashed (there was a lot of food during the final few days) and I took on the task of returning it to its former state of cleanliness (which took several hours of reorganizing...) and I cleaned and organized the storage area along with the newly graded pieces that many students did not pick up. I consider this to be a big part of my final internship project because by the end the classroom was ready and prepared for a new class next semester. Along with this I cleaned my mentor's office (sorting files and papers). How has this experience (Internship) made you consider your college path that will ultimately lead to your career?
This experience has in many ways helped me to better understand both the paths that I can take in college to get me to my career, but it has also helped me to learn some more basic life skills needed to pursue my passion. My internship has definitely shifted my focus academically, and helped to recognize some of my priorities in my education. This came from the discussions I had with my mentor as well as the work that I did in the art class. It's my goal to become a self employed professional artist, in whatever mediums I can master. Art has always been more than a hobby to me, and by taking on this internship, I have discovered that teaching art is a passion of its own. I had some misconceptions previously about the amount of dedication you need to excel in a teaching position, and personally I don't think I would find it as fulfilling as the act of creating. I can lose myself for hours in my art and consider it time well spent, even if the product is not successful, and in that way teaching is similar. While I don't wish to become a teacher in the future, this internship has been helpful to me in many ways, especially when considering the path I will take in college. I was able to be present in a real professional art class, which is never something to devalue. I found that observing the class helped me to put myself in the students' shoes, but also witness them from the teacher's point of view. Overall, I feel a little bit more prepared for college, now that I've been pretty immersed in the environment for a while. It's still a daunting prospect, but I think that I have gained some valuable insight, both for college and career. View from the train on my way back from Palomar, and a creepy abandoned red car My wonderful dog Loosey who passed away during my internship (May 16th) <3 The walk from the train station to class C-1 A cool bug Susan of the storage room, after organizing A drawing made between classes A Viking drawing because I like Vikings (also God of War 4 just came out and it is consuming my life) Thumbnail sketching during the class, I worked on these while the students were really focused I drew this when I was waiting for my bus While cleaning up the back room/storage room, I came across my old sketchbook from last semester when I took Bo's summer class haha... oops. But I got to look at these old relics:
Part 1.
How did you measure the success of the work you did while you were an intern? What did you learn from this? During my time as an intern here at Palomar, the success of the work I did was increasingly dependent on my time and effort spent. I realized very quickly that it was important for me to assign to myself an amount of work that I could complete within a reasonable time frame. This meant being more active in my approach to schedule and work with my mentor to ensure that the projects (PowerPoint/Slide presentations with drawing terminology and examples) could be the best I could make them. What did you learn about your own work from your internship project? This internship project taught me about my work ethic and about how I can improve it, as well as what I should keep doing in the future. I've come to see that many of my bad habits that I've accumulated through school are more detrimental to my work than I previously realized, specifically my tendency for procrastination. I intend to take as much knowledge as I can from this experience and hopefully use it to become more capable in the future. I have also learned however, that during stressful situations, I am usually able to double down on my efforts and work hard through obstacles. I have never been in this type of work environment wherein deadlines have heavier consequences, but in doing so now I have found it to be a source of motivation (however unpleasant). Part 2. What new appreciations did you develop while working as an intern? Why? While working at the college as an intern, unsurprisingly I gained new insight into teaching and the work behind teaching art. But I was surprised by how much dedication is really needed for this profession. What new questions has your internship inspired you to ask about our world? What has it made you wonder about? What are you moved to go out and do or learn about on your own time? This internship has inspired me even more to continue pursuing my career in art, but it has also opened my eyes to some realities of it. My mentor Bo told me that when teaching painting/drawing etc. it really helps if you are, just like the students, pursuing your own career as an artist professionally so that you may empathize with the students but also share insights to the industry. I have learned a lot from my mentor during this month, and I have enjoyed immersing myself in this teaching type of environment, but it has also helped me to understand that teaching is most likely not the path for me. It was helpful in this regard, to really contemplate what this path would mean for me personally, and I'm so grateful I had this opportunity. I'm pretty fortunate in my internship that my mentor is very understanding and open. My family and I were going through a difficult time last week, our dog who has been with us for 12 years passed away. It has been a sudden adjustment period for us, and personally it hit me really hard. I made my situation known to my mentor and my internship coordinator, and both of them were very compassionate and lenient with me. I recognize that often this isn't the case in the professional world. It's difficult sometimes to express eloquently when you need a break or some rest, especially if your effort is not evident in your work. I know that in the professional work, there is a level of self advocacy you need to be able to work efficiently instead of allowing yourself to slack without going through proper channels to request time when you need it.
I'm glad however, that I haven't had to exercise this type of self advocacy during my time here. I have learned how to use other forms of it though, specifically when setting schedules. I try to retain a flexibility with my schedule, but also taking into account what I can handle time-wise. I've found this to be a little difficult, but manageable on the whole. It's important to reflect on the type of work I can do for how long I can do it, and then communicating that to people who depend on the work being done. The semester at Palomar is over now, the classes had a really nice critique session with awesome feedback and everyone has (more or less) picked up all the graded pieces. Now that I will be in the classroom less, my mentor and I have been talking about the final internship project. So far, I've done some smaller projects for the class such as organizing the storage space, sorting together the objects that are used for observational drawing/painting, supplies, old work and so on. Now, I have started to work on putting together some power point presentations to use in classes as examples, filling them with works by professional artists in each category (ex. figure painting, still life drawing, creative approach to drawing, human anatomy etc.)
We decided that the final project should somehow be a showing of the work that I've done during this internship to help make future classes run smoother. One of the major projects I will do to achieve this is creating a system to organize student work digitally via USB. Monday, May 14th
Today was far more relaxed than I had anticipated, but I was still super nervous. Even so, I really enjoyed the atmosphere of the class. The morning class, Live Painting, lasts from 11:15 to 2:20, and the whole time I was in love with the energy that everyone expressed for the work they were doing. I'm very excited to learn from this experience, even though the semester is ending, I love seeing everyone's projects come together. I also enjoyed feeling helpful during these classes, (live painting and life drawing), and I'm very happy to help with grading all of the finished products of the students' work. I found it very refreshing to be surrounded by people with similar ambitions to me, and to see all of them trying their best to meet their own standards. It may be a little cliche, but it feels good to know that there is a community of people willing to help each other exceed their own expectations in art. I'm very excited to see how I can help in any way that I can. My job right now mostly consists of fetching and altering things within the class, and being available to help, but this weekend I will also be involved in the actual grading of the pieces and I couldn't be happier to help, all of the pieces are coming along great! Part 2) Internship Reflection
This internship so far has been a really good experience for me, I really like the atmosphere of the classroom and even though the semester at Palomar is over I still have a lot of work to do. I've been wondering though how much this will prepare me for the career I want to pursue, so I talked to my mentor Bo about it. We were having lunch in his office and he asked me, "So, what do you want to be when you grow up?" No matter how many times I get asked this question, I don't think I'm ever prepared. "Well," I said, "I mean that depends on if I ever actually grow up." He laughed and I was grateful he understood what I meant. I don't want to 'be' anything when I'm older, when I think about my future, I want to 'do' things. I want to make projects and create things that I am proud of. And so, I told him that, and we focused on animation. I found it really exciting that he wasn't familiar with the process of animating, and it was really fun to describe, specifically cel animation. He cautioned me some, about the rigor and determination that it must take to create something frame by frame, all the hours and work it will be. He asked me if that was the sort of thing I could see myself doing, and I told him that I can't see myself doing anything that didn't involve that kind of effort. My life right now is a treacherous balance of school and work and sleep, my school work doesn't end when I come home, but my art/music projects begin when I come home. Oftentimes, I can lose myself in a project, spending hours on end correcting and reshaping and finishing a project, whether it be a painting, a piano piece, an animation, a drawing, but it never feels like work to me (unless I've been putting it off). Bo seemed to relax a bit when I said this, and he reassured me that, yes this was the path for me. The environment in the three classes that Bo teaches are pretty different from one another. The live painting class, which stretches on from 11 o'clock to about 2:30 on Mondays and Wednesdays, is the largest class and the most exciting. There's live models, and plaster casts, and everything smells like oil paints. Everyone has such a high energy and passion, and they're all at different levels of skill. I made friends with a bunch of them who also take the 2:30 to 5:30 life drawing class, and a couple of them who just... kinda stick around. The life drawing class is similar in energy and many of the students come from the live painting class, and the atmosphere is so friendly and productive. The foundations of drawing class... is a different story. It's much smaller for one, and the students are visibly less engaged on the whole. It's plain to see with some of them that they're taking the class for credits, but many of them are there to learn. The critique sessions have been a blast, everyone has been super constructive, and it's always welcome feedback good or bad. The commute to and from Palomar hasn't been that bad, my day usually starts around 8, I get ready to go, my mom drops me off at the transit near her school and I catch the bus up to the train station, and the train up to Palomar. I usually get there around 10:30 and I have time to read all the way there, and I get coffee. I really like being able to control my own schedule as well, with as much freedom as the public transportation system can provide me. |
AuthorAudrey M. |