day 24:30 - 30 day challenge

day 24: something you've learned
apparently i've decided to go literal with this one.
in high school, i put off any sort of foreign language classes.  it was an either/or situation for graduation requirements between foreign language and fine arts...  well, i had fine arts credits out the wazoo with all the band & winter guard stuff i did so i pushed it off to college.  i didn't want to take spanish or french anyways, which were the two languages del oro offered at the time.  i wanted to take ASL (american sign language) and so that's what i did.  my teacher was deaf, which made it a little difficult, but i guess that's true immersion right?  i took asl 2 with a hearing professor who was fantastic.  her class was entertaining and interesting, which really helped the learning process.  my downfall was my third semester of ASL.  I was all game and ready to go for it, but the professor I had for the class was just not my cup of tea.  he was older and deaf, and his personality was a little gruff i guess you could say.  that semester was a bit harder... we had video recorded finals, and did this weird model home project that i'm still not sure what it had to to with sign language at all since it was completely power point.  very odd.  i also took a classifiers class from him that semester, which was like a side course of different ASL things.
sad to say, i really don't remember much from those classes besides the basics.  i can pick up a few things here and there when my aunt signs things - like when she said she was looking for a green shirt across the noisy dance studio the other week - but i don't think i could hold a full conversation with anyone.  at least not at this point.  so maybe i'll brush up on it sometime.  maybe i'll refresh my memory.  regardless, i am glad for the experience that i had learning ASL those semesters at sierra college.  while it may not be as useful in the "real world" at this moment as knowing spanish would be, my experience learning it was great, and i would not have changed it for anything.
two movies i really enjoyed from the classes:
beyond silence
mr. holland's opus
and the not text book we read:
deaf like me

day 19:30 - 30 day challenge

i don't miss that logo... that's for sure day 19: something you miss
as weird as this may sound... i sorta miss college.
no, not in the "hey, let's spend a ton of money to get a degree that feels useless in the end" sort of way, but in a "give my week a purpose" sort of way.  i would go to school 4-5 days a week, then go to work after that.  busy day meant a tired, but happy emily.  i'm not fond of sitting around the house and doing nothing - which is in part why i've been picking up as many shifts as possible at the play center.  i'd rather fill my time being busy, getting stuff done, and having something to show for my day.  if i could go take college classes for free, i totally would.  i enjoy learning (providing the delivery isn't horribly boring) and take any advantage of it that i can.
i miss the college years for some of the friends i made.  not so much the sierra college years, since that was all basically high school all over again.  same people, different campus.  at sac state, i got to know some girls that were great to talk photography with (whoot whoot second to back row group) but now after graduation are kinda all over the place.  riley is in san diego, emily is in canada... actually i think she's in anaheim right now, katie is in roseville (yeah, no excuse there) and more.  we had some fun hang out nights for sure.
i also miss college a bit for the photo classes.  i had a reason to be regularly using my camera and doing what i love.  it gave me a project to be creative with, come up with a way to execute it, and then completing it by the deadline.  i think i've let myself focus too much on the wedding & family client aspect of everything, and forgot to take time for myself to shoot what ever i feel like shooting.  which is why i plan to take my holga with me to disneyland next month.  bust out some fun random film shots and just enjoy it.  plus it would remove the instant gratification of digital and raise the excitement for waiting to see the final products.
i miss my ballerina project.  throughout all my "big" projects over my 5 college years, this one was by far my favorite complete project.  i love how it all turned out, and am quite proud of myself for the effort i put in for it through the semester.  i have thought again and again to do another one of these as a personal project, and while writing out this post, i'm thinking that perhaps this summer will bring on ballerinas 2.0.  maybe it will be digital, maybe it will be film.  i don't know.  i guess you'll just have to stay tuned and find out.
to see the last round of ballerinas, head on over to freeze frame blog, conveniently linking the ballerinas tag just for you :)