but I had to go then, and I have to go this year too because again, it is part of my mark.
THIS year, I actually made shit.
For a second year, more than 75 students from the Department of Visual Arts present their annual Great Canadian Beaver Balls Multiples installation feature. Dub-inspired artworks are encapsulated in plastic balls and will be available from classic Northern Beaver vending machines for $2 each during gallery hours.
exfuckingcuse me, but I am an English major and I still had to make a fucking Beaver Ball. actually, I had to make ten. it cost $5 for the 'materials package' the creepy art teacher made us buy... we had to make teeny-tiny accordion booklets using lines of Lillian Allen's poetry. you'd think that they'd encourage us to do something original, but no, we HAD to make booklets according to this madwoman's specifications, and the only difference was we got to pick our own colours and whichever lines of Allen's poetry we like most. how generous!
so in addition to the $5, creepy art teacher encouraged us to use a colour printer or colour photocopier to make our design. I'm not about to go buy a colour cartridge just to make fucking Balls. I'm also not about to waste $15 on colour photocopies of my design, like one of my class peers did. so... I made free plain b+w photocopies of text I generated in Microsoft word, using my work photocopier, then coloured each in by hand.
colouring in by hand, then actually assembling each book took me like two days.
the best part is that the Ball completion is part of my mark (!!! for a fourth year English class) and the Professor is, you guessed it, Mr. "I Didn't Like The Sarcasm In Your Email" who I now feel like I have to always tiptoe around as to avoid offending his delicate sensibilities.
not only that, but then they sell the balls that we spent money and time doing, for $2 a piece. and the school gets that money.
so some of my fellow students blew off other assignments and spent like $30 to make these, and in reward, they get marked somehow based on creepy art teacher's criteria, and that makes up 5% of their mark, and then the school makes roughly $2000 ($2/ball x ten balls per student x 100 'participating' students, adding my English class of 25 to the 75 art students who are apparently participating).
I just hate that a lot of people are preparing to go to grad school or at least just trying to fucking graduate and, instead of focusing on midterms and papers, we have to focus on ARTS AND CRAFTS TIME as part of our mark. like a kindergarten class forced to make snowmen out of popcorn, construction paper and glue. except this time Nicolena Leva isn't eating the glue surreptitiously (OR IS SHE).
now that I have already handed them in, I had the bright idea to put PUBES in each of the balls so they would be like real balls. but Professor Sensitive selects one ball at random to "mark", so I can see that not going over so well.
ETA: I talked to a girl tonight who said she spent $60 on colour photocopies. which could buy a couple week's worth of groceries. or a well-crafted essay from one of those shady people who writes essays for other people. srsly! that much money and effort for 5% of a grade???
