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Wednesday 28 November 2001
It's 9.05am an I am sitting here with an
empty, gurgling demanding belly and a towel still wrapped
around my head. I stayed in bed reading until 8.30, thinking
"I did well, I made it to the course
information session / folio review yesterday without having
a complete nervous breakdown, I deserve a little lie in".
The book
is great - three girls who have just matriculated from a small
English town's high school just after the second world war,
so it's full of ration books and wavy set hair, tennis shoes
and soppy, cheating men. Jane Gardam was my favourite author
when I was about 15. Bilgewater
was a great book.
The folio assessment yesterday was non-eventful.
No indication was given as to the impression the folio made,
and I will now just have to wait for a letter in the mail.
The information session, as predicted, consisted of the same
stuff we heard at open day in August, but in more detail,
but nevertheless it was enough to make me even more excited
by the prospect of printing and studying, and painting huge
colour wheels and dying fabrics. The hall was full of kids
who were around 12 years my junior, most of whom would have
just finished their year 12 exams. I surprised myself by being
comfortable with the idea that I am going in to this course
as a daggy mature age student, the kind I once rolled my eyes
at when they enthusiastically wrote down every piece of information
and answered every question with bravado either correctly
or incorrectly. I could see clusters of tentative friendships
forming already around me and I felt glad to be too old to
even consider it. "You're boyfriend is 24? Man! That
must be cool!" I heard one girl say to another.
When I first started arts at Monash about
10 years ago I remember sitting in the big old, structurally
dubious, Menzies
building at lunchtime eating a sandwich, staring at an open
book without actually reading it while wondering sadly if
I would ever make friends. Now I am pleased to be thinking
about all the exciting work, and the prospect of new friends
seems kind of irrelevant.
(oooh - just read paula's latest...
she has a much more detailed spin on a similar theme. Weird
synchronicity across the globe)
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