Diagnosis: boring

Art, Music and Physical Development was an online class. We were given a four-part assignment: to look over three art-based websites and do a few quick tasks there, then to reply to a posted comment on creativity, failure and art and how the three are related.

My reply was something along these lines: Both entrepreneurs and artists make their livings from new ideas, and both fail regularly. The key to success is to learn from failures and to adapt an idea until it does work. The difference in art is that sometimes the "failures" turn out to work better than the artist's intentions. To be an artist, you have to learn to know what the art is telling you instead of always being its creator.

There was more to it, but that was the gist. I suppose there's a smidgen of truth under all that bullshit.

***

In Diagnostic Reading, Dr. C lectured on a wide variety of subjects, mostly old familiar concepts like phonological awareness, visual impairments, high stakes testing, Piaget's assimilation and accommodation, factors that influence learning to read (educational and non), and so on. And on and on.

Dr. C has a magpie mind; she constantly changes subjects in midstream, constantly being reminded of something past, present or future, something in her family life or some assignment due in three weeks or something we just went over a few minutes ago. It has the cumulative effect of being both incredibly boring and totally mystifying. Very few of my fellow students are completely sure what assignment is due when. Oh, there's a syllabus, but its stark, black and white clarity is obfuscated by Dr. C's weekly emails, which always contain extraneous information about assignments that aren't due that week.

I do know that I have to write a sample Reader's Theater and a booktalk for next week. At least.