summah summah summah (promised post out-of-sequence)

that's right. summer plans. well. maybe i should be less vague. i'll lay out all the known plans from here until december (because that's as far as i got).

this summer, i'll be in chicago taking some summer courses at columbia college in chicago. (not to be confused with columbia university in new york.) to finish my minor in graphic design, i need just two more classes, and it makes sense to do them this summer instead of next fall. graphic design faculty within the wheaton art department have been flighty--honestly, it's like the wheaton version of hogwarts' "defense against the dark arts" professors. this move also makes sense regarding my credit needs to graduate on time*. i'm looking forward to doing some good work with people who know what they're doing when i really have some time and energy to put into it, instead of trying to juggle three other classes plus intense design work.

when i'm not in class, i intend to be back at saatchi and saatchi x internship. they've been asking about me coming back since i left, which i'm still incredibly flattered by. since i won't be there full-time, i won't be monetarily compensated and i've come to a place of being okay with that. another summer with the ssx crowd is fun and heck, saatchi for two summers in a row is not a bad thing to have on a résumé.

i'm still in the process of understanding where i'm living, exactly what classes i'm taking, or how it's all going to work out. i've been having some trouble with columbia's administration departments (no one can tell me when i register or if i am eligible for housing...(okay, it seriously took a week and 8 emails for one department to send me a housing contract. that's not good, people. this isn't rocket science, this is a school. figure it out.)). i'll be visiting them soon to have someone help me out face to face!

recently i've started to question if there's something better i could be doing with the summer. columbia's a great school, but it's not the only arts and design program around. i love chicago, but i know less and less people who'll be around to play with me. saatchi's a great opportunity to hone skills, but it's charted territory, so to speak. i sort of wonder if there are people i could be connecting with either at home or who knows where that could be pushing the edges of my map farther out (sticking with the "charted territory" metaphor!). i find most rest in this plan when i remember that this summer is not last summer, i'll be working with not only ssx people, but columbia students as well. eek! i am actually a little nervous about the whole thing. but i am excited, so i suppose it all equals itself out.

*i hope this doesn't come as a surprise to anyone, but on-time graduation for me is december, 2008. yep, a semester early. if you couple a healthy amount of credits from high school AP classes with a vigilant crackdown on gen eds and making every hour count (even in australia!), and you get your classes done very quickly. i've almost always known graduating early was possible, but wasn't sure about it until a few months ago. when i got back from australia, i realized that wheaton does a lot of things well, but it just isn't equipped to teach what i'm interested in. there's just not much use in me sticking around. so, i've applied for my degree, gotten everything checked out, and i'm good to go for december 2008.

where do i go from there? beats me. back to [another] school? some time off? try to get a job? embark on another grand adventure across the globe?

and yes. it scares the living daylights out of me. the strangest fact is that i get more and more comfortable with it as it draws nearer. i'd assume that's a bell-shaped curve and i'll start flipping out again in another four months, but in the meantime, it's alright.

i am hungry for adventure, though. there is too much work to be done in the world to sit still for long.