9/11/02
One of my classes, the Critical Issues one, turns out to be a required class for MFA students and normally off-limits to everyone else. So everyone in the MFA program gets shuttled through multiple classes every day, Monday through Wednesday, and Tuesday afternoon there's a room with 25 MFA students and, er, me. Yesterday, at the beginning of the class, the instructor addressed all of us: "Now, I know after this we've got a visiting artist thing, and at the visiting artist presentations there are some other people there--in particular, a lot of art history students. And I know that they ask some questions that, well, might not be the sort of question we'd ask. But here's the thing: these people are the ones who go on to be gallery owners, they go on to be art buyers, some of them might even go on to be journalists, and maybe they'll write something about people you know, and maybe you'll even want them to write something about you. So you just have to get used to them now. Talk to them! Don't be shy! Be nice to them! Understand that they have to ask the questions they ask! It's really important that you start making those connections now..."
Over on one side of the room, I was thinking: Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth. I really, really hope that the language I speak that has the same vocabulary is actually the same language.