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| Flowers - Pencil |
So, as high school was coming to a close and it was time to figure out where I was going and what I was gonna do with my life, I was all over the place. I looked into cosmetology, graphic design, a few other things, but eventually passed up a 4 year degree to attend the Art Institute of Dallas for Fashion Design. Sewing was another interest of mine, and I really hadn't done very much of it at all. But what I had done was draw out my halloween costumes and my grandmother would sew them for me. She also did this with a couple costumes while I still had the theatre bug.
Naturally, I thought that I could design clothes... and so the next phase of my distraction was put into motion.
The College Years...
One of my life regrets is choosing the Art Institute over a 4 year state college. I visited the University of North Texas (UNT) and really loved it, but I was so sick of school that I decided to attend AI instead with the idea that I could be done within 2 years. This was another mistake, and the universe was trying to tell me this over and over again during my time there.
Rude Roommates...
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| Styrofoam Cup - Pencil |
I suffered through a multitude of things, one of which was a long chain of horrible roommates. Housing for Art Institute, back when I was there from 2001-2003, was an apartment complex which had almost been taken over by the school. They were 2 bed, 1 bath getups and 4 of us had to stay in an apartment. Pretty typical for college dorms. Everything seemed ok for a few weeks, then all hell broke loose. One or two roommates would party into the wee hours of the morning the night before we had our routine housing inspection, and then they would disappear in the morning leaving me to clean up the 20-30 beer bottles that would be incriminating evidence of underage drinking. I think back to it now and I should have just left them there, called the school and asked for a housing change. I didn't stick up for myself. I mean, I'm no angel, but that was a horrible thing to do to a person and I would never have done that to them.
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| Dressform - Pencil |
Over time roommates changed, which made things even worse in some cases and to make a long story short, I was homeless twice until my boyfriend (I'll call him "T" and he is now my husband) and I got our own place. I was able to actually focus more on school and not on trying to fend off social piranhas. Being used and abused by most of my roommates taught me hard lessons about sticking up for myself and to be careful who I give my time and energy away to. I helped those girls so many times with their work, often over extending myself and staying up all night to finish my own work. At one point T and I had to defend ourselves from our roommates abusive boyfriend, who found it very entertaining to try and get her to fight me. T came out of our room trying to figure out what was going on when the psycho decided to try and attack him. T ended up putting him in a headlock subduing him until he quit trying to hit him. I was so proud of my guy because he never once threw a punch. That guy was bad news and we got out of there fast. That was the last roommate situation we endured before we moved into our own place. Later, that girl came to us and apologized, and luckily she escaped that relationship unscathed for the most part. You live, you learn...
Student Blues...
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| Silk Scarf - Pencil |
Meanwhile, I was learning some drawing basics and other drawing techniques specifically geared toward fashion drawing. I really liked the drawing classes, but was a bit jealous that the graphic design students had the life drawing class where people posed. It just didn't make sense that fashion designers wouldn't have that class too, considering we are drawing clothes on the human form. There were a lot of things like this that just didn't make sense and I did think about leaving the school in search of a better education. But this is where my stubbornness came to bite me in the rear. I had a nagging impulse to finish. I had already been through hell and back with my living situation, and I wasn't going to let it stop me. I was too worried what other people would think if I left. That I would be considered a failure. Now-a-days, I would not even bat an eyelash over it, but I was so naive at that time, everything was overwhelming and I had to hold onto something.
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| Platform Shoes - Pencil |
I studied pattern making, fashion drawing, digital arts, and other various things such as fashion history. And no matter what I had learned, it always seemed like we just scratched the surface of what we should know. I came out of the Art Institute feeling under educated, and when I went to my first real job interview it was painfully apparent that was the case. Embarrassingly so. On top of that, the class credits were worthless. The first time I looked into going back to school, I found this out in the admissions process and learned that I would have to take all my classes over. I would have to test out of core classes if I didn't want to take them again. Ugh! Well, it seems that my feelings were correct about the school. There was a recent lawsuit against the Art Institutes for lying to prospective students and strong arming people into student loans that they can't afford. I believe the term used was "Predatory Admissions Tactics".
Fashion Faux Pas...
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| Scarf - Pencil |
There were other things that rubbed me the wrong way. A couple clicks of people in the Fashion Design student pool that were not so nice, and regularly harped on people for dressing in a way that they considered "wrong." One incident happened in our color theory class. The class consisted of mostly fashion students and a couple spill over students from the graphic design dept. The teacher asked us to go around and introduce ourselves and say what our favorite color was. A graphic student girl said her favorite color was orange. One of the girls from the clicks I mentioned laughed at her and then said something to the effect of calling her stupid for liking the color and that nobody should like that color, there was nothing "cool" about that color. Well, at that point I had had enough. I was tired of their crap and was also tired of the reputation these people were giving the other fashion students. So...I said something. I pretty much said this: "Really? You're going to make fun of her because she likes orange? You've got to be kidding me. And by the way, there are plenty of cool things that are orange, flowers, VW Bugs...what gives you the right to judge and make fun of her for liking a color?" That's about the gist of what I said. I was so pissed, but proud that I didn't just spew expletives at her.
My skin grew a bit thicker that day, and I stopped caring so much about what other people thought. After class, I approached the graphic design student and apologized to her on behalf of the other fashion design students that weren't complete a-holes, and we became friends.
To Be Continued...
