Hurricane, History, & Halloween

What a hectic week! I’m sure everyone has heard about Hurricane Sandy hitting the east coast this week, and although we didn’t get a lot of the flooding in Boston, we had some pretty serious wind and rain on Sunday and Monday. Suffolk and NESAD classes were cancelled all day Monday and started up again Tuesday. That combined with midterms this week and last week have made for a pretty crazy time. Besides my drawing critique, I’ve had a written midterm for Ethics and for Ideas of Western Art. The ethics midterm involved describing and analyzing different ethical theorists and theories. It would’ve been a lot to study, but my ethics professor decided that the test should be open book! I got to use my text book and my notes from class while I took the test, which took a serious load off of my stress. I didn’t have the same luck with my Ideas of Western Art midterm; I had a lot to study and definitely no open book. The exam included some multiple choice questions and short answer questions. Mostly though, the test consisted of identifying and describing pieces of art. This was the tough section: we had to memorize – for each piece of art – the title, the material it was made of, the date it was created, the time period it was created, and the historical, symbolic, and functional significance behind it. The professor only put six images on the test but those were selected from a group of about thirty from the semester so far. Needless to say, the majority of my weekend and my hurricane-day-off were spent studying notecards diligently!

Outside of studying, I did manage to have a little bit of fun this weekend! Since Halloween is so close, my friends and I wore costumes on Saturday night for a party. In true art student form, my friend and I dressed up as the painting “American Gothic” by Grant Wood. I was the tall old guy- let’s just say I can really pull off a bald cap. My friend wore a blonde wig and an old dress, and I silver spray-painted some Harry Potter glasses and made my own pitchfork.We wore our costumes to NESAD on the actual day of Halloween, and there were plenty of other great costumes from my peers and professors. I hope that everyone has a safe and happy Halloween!