With my schedule, Tuesdays are usually the hardest days for me. This is what it looks like from start to finish:
8:30-11:30 Animation in 3D
1:00-2:30 American Film Genres
2:30-4:00 History of World Cinema
4:00-6:00 or 7:00 Screening for American Film Genres
7:00-9:00 or 10:00 Screening for East Asian Melodrama
After that I usually walk home, eat, take a shower, get in as much homework as I can manage, then collapse into bed. Even as I’m writing this, I’m glancing at my bed every two seconds like it holds the secrets of the universe; I’m afraid to look too long for fear of getting sucked in and completely forgetting to finish this post.
It’s not all bad though. Even though today is always my longest day, there’s something fulfilling about always knowing that there’s another place that I have to be. At the very least it makes the day pass much faster. It’s like before I wake up in the morning and before I know it my classes are already done and I only have to make it through the screenings. And those aren’t too bad either. Even though they take up a lot of time, it’s essentially like going to the movies for free. I have a movie bucketlist like any self-respecting film studenet and going to these mandatory screenings is just an opportunity to scratch another movie off of the list. Plus the teachers let you bring food into the screening room because they need a student passing out about as much as they need a hole in their head. So basically, if you play your cards right, the screenings become a chance to relax, snack and unwind a little.
But I have to keep it 100 with you, it’s not always all fun and games. As a film student, I end up taking a lot of film classes like History of Electronic Media or History of the Modern World that are interesting in a distant kind of way, but definitely not when they come with mandatory screenings, papers, and final exams. I’m going to be totally honest here, those types of classes normally have the worst screenings. I literally fell asleep in more than half of my History of Electronic Media screenings, to the point where I’m pretty sure my teacher would have preferred I just didn’t show up. But as much as I’d like to skip classes like that, they’re always the ones that are required so I end up just having to suck it up and play through the pain anyway.
But anyway, I was only writing about this because I just got back from a screening not too long ago and thought it might be a good idea to inform any future film majors or minors what the classes were like. Now that that’s done though, I’m going to get some much needed sleep.
