HOW TO PLAN YOUR PLANNING
I expect there are many students that think the final run-up to the degree show begins in March, or April – around Easter – but the truth is that the sooner you get your head around the idea that time is of the essence here; the more likely you will be to get off your umm-ing and ah-ing behind and do some work. We all have studio days that don’t quite go as planned – closed workshops, forgot to bring cash for materials (some campus shops still don’t accept cards), waiting on a print/frame/smoke-machine to be delivered – anything and everything can put you off your stride when you’re an art student. Not least of which is your fellow students, making you come over to their laptop to see some great piece of work by their favourite artist, asking you read their latest dissertation draft, or – and by far more likely – inviting you over to their space to watch Ultimate Dog Tease on YouTube. AGAIN.
Now I’m not about to suggest that you snub all of these invitations – that Dog Tease clip is, after all, pretty funny/cute/cruel/whatever – but it’s best to avoid being drawn into anything that takes too long and adds nothing to your day/week/life.
Ok, in first year we all took lunch breaks that lasted the entire afternoon, into the evening and ended up in accident and emergency two weeks later, but, with what amounts to around fifteen weeks to go (depending on how much work you plan on doing over Easter) until your degree show, the time for such narcissistic navel-gazing has passed.
So PLAN YOUR DAY, plan your week, even. The key to making the most of your day in the studio is GO INTO IT KNOWING WHAT YOU WANT OUT OF IT.
You may be the kind of tunnel-visioned, driven individual that can handle this task effortlessly. Personally, I prefer to compile a to-do list. A good to-do list includes several different types of task, from catching up with a tutor to phoning around for prices on bulldog clips. The point is to ensure that, should one or more of the items on the list fall through, you will always have something else to do;somewhere else to go; someone else to badger. That way you will never fall into the trap of ‘going for a wander’ (although, including the odd studio wander on your to-do list is essential), or ‘going to work from home’, which is usually code for ‘going to watch television and eat in bed’.
I’m not saying such things are inherently bad, but when you’ve only got four or five months until the end of your degree, you kind of have to let them go for a while.
So ends my first post, if you’ve read it and have more to add on the subject of planning, feel free to comment, and share this post with others.
