Feelings and Promptings

I'm feeling more like a professional lately. I'm doing things in my education that is making my instructors look at me and say "really? I've not done things with that aspect of this program, how did you do that? How would you apply that into a project? How would I do that?". It's a good feeling, creates a sense of importance and probably makes my head get bigger than it should ever have become. Either way, it's nice to be appreciated in your field, especially when there are times when you feel "sub par" compared to your classmates and/or instructors. It's a good feeling when the people you work with compliment the work you do, choose you first for important jobs, and when the secretary says "you're the only dependable one here, we can always count on you to be here at the call time on the board regardless of when everyone else might come in."

It started as frustrations with the program. It continued to build and hit a point in escalation when I was ready to walk away. I talked with some people, accepted their advice and stuck with it. I thought about it. And again. And again. And again. Over and over and over. It's never left my mind. Things like that tend to have a reason for sticking around. Not sure that I'm supposed to continue sticking with it... Wasn't sure of that when I decided to.

I was shooting the "State of the University" address this week. Interim President Liz Hitch was speaking, addressing faculty, staff, and a few students who actually chose to show up, about how the University was/is doing. She went on and on about UVU being the "most engaged university in the universe" and how great things are there and how despite a 15% cut-back in funding we're still doing good and not entirely in a hiring freeze.

She opened the forum up for Q&A. After some faculty asked some questions she fielded a question from the UVU Review (the UVU newspaper). The question was if the school was going to continue it's membership with a clubhouse as a perk for certain of it's higher-up faculty. The response was essentially that the Clubhouse is a one time investment and that it's a negligible factor financially wise. She then mentioned how we needed to cut back how much food we provided for events, how 4% of our budget each year through the various departments gets eaten up, literally. She went on to say how important it was for blah blah blah blah. She kept skirting around issues of employment, money, department needs, etc. If you don't believe me, I know where you can get the footage of the whole thing. I was one of the three camera ops recording the whole thing.

I can't recall all that she said, I just remember how livid I was (standing no more than 15 feet from her the whole time it was hard for me to keep my professionalism where I was so close I could have said things easily without anyone else hearing what was said........but I like my job and ultimately she could fire me, so I canned my thoughts) after what she said during the Q/A. I sent a annonymous e-mail to her later that day. I received a response from one of her assistants. It didn't say much.

I was thinking today, I had said to them I'd rather pay as much as $1000 more a term if it meant having better faculty and more than one full time faculty in my department and classes that didn't have to be taken three times in order to get enough credits to graduate. I was thinking today about how "engaged" UVU is in my education. Perhaps UVU is the most engaged university for general education, perhaps in some other ways, but it's also deluded. To think the administration thinks everything in the school is just fine ("the state of the University is Great!" ~Liz Hitch) is like saying the crime rate in New York 15 years ago was acceptable. We have less than 200 students in a stadium made for 8000 when we have basketball games, when we play against teams from instate they have close to 10 times the amount of fans in our stadium than we have, and even out of state teams have more fans in the stands than we do.

Is the AVC (Art & Visual Communications) dept. actively engaged in my education? yes. It's a hands on department, other departments should be taking lessons from AVC classes, as they have some of the best applied forms of education that I can think of. If you want to learn how to write, write, don't read about writing, write more. If you want to learn how to interact with people with social, hormonal, mental imbalances, etc, work with them, work around them, observe them, reading about them only does so much. The principle is simple. Is the UVU AVC dept. more engaged in my life as a student (or any of the AVC students) than any other art school? No. The Academy of Art University in SanFrancisco would throw it's arms up in the air if they heard Liz Hitch yapping. So would the Brooks Institute of Photography. I'm assuming NYU would also, and they're a diversified university much like UVU but their faculty is so developed they're competing against schools like the Brooks Institute of Photography (who at one point had been THE place to go to, I'm not sure if they still are as I've heard conflicting reports about them in recent years). So, is UVU AVC the most engaged in the Universe? No.

The UVU school photographer is a UVSC dropout. He felt like he was learning more from reading up and practicing styles from Adams, Weston, Eggleston, Bresson and others, and he dropped out. He's now the school's photographer. Beat out a UVU(UVSC?) graduate. When he was new at it he went to the only full-time faculty the Photo Dept. has. He asked Simon for advice with a shoot he had coming up, Simon asked "what's your budget?" "$80,000"......"I've never shot anything with a budget that large, I don't know what to tell you". I learned more about lighting in a technical sense from sitting in on a shoot with the school photographer than I ever gained from Simon in a lighting class that lasted a term long. Is UVU engaged in my needs? Is it the best place for me? Is it going to give me the education to compete against recent graduates and professionals alike? No. I don't feel like it is.

It's a hard place to be in. Knowing that if you stick with a place you're in that you'll end up shooting weddings the rest of your life because you can't compete with anyone else in the business. The quickest thing to do would finish the education at the place, regardless of the issues inherant with staying there. So what do you do? Apply to monster.com and have three job offers in 3 different states to teach photography? Look at jobs with newspapers and other places that are paying 150%-200% the going rate of the local jobs? Find and pray about a place that is right and see if there's not a school there that has a better education to be given? Yeah, probably. It would seem like the logical thing to do, logically speaking. There's a job in Jersey that I more than qualify for, I'm experienced and good at it, and feel like I could do well at it. It would be kind of an editor position from the sounds of it too, which would be skipping a step or two on the ladder. Am I considering it? Yeah. I would be close enough I could do classes at NYU, one or two a term while working full-time. I would love to go to NYU. I could get my BFA and MFA there and build a resume and real-life experience at the same time. Sure I wouldn't have my MFA for like 8-10 years from now if I started in the fall and was going to school minimally. To live near NYC, without living in it, to live in a safe place with a low cost of living (comparable or lower to that of Utah) where the pay is better..... It's very tempting.

But how do you tell the family?

Blog about it... lol

I would be making more than the camel. Did some pricing, found that we could easily afford a house in a good neighborhood. I guess I have to reply to the job listing and see if they're interested in me before I can really get an answer from above to see if it's right...

Either way, I never thought I'd be considering things like this without having my BFA already, but out of 60 Photography postings on Monster.com I haven't seen more than 3 that require a degree. One requires 7 years experience, another requires a Bachelors, the rest don't require anything more than experience, or proof that you can do the kind of work they're looking for. Portfolio.

I need to shoot more.

Again.