Last term the only class I took was Beginning Drawing. I had taken art classes with this instructor for about 2-1/2 years now and it was time to try to hone the drawing skills.

The class was a disaster of Ishtar proportion: I got into difficulty with it 3-4 weeks in. I thought about dropping the class but decided to stick with it and try to work through it. Then it got REALLY bad, and I thought about just withdrawing and taking the "W" on the transcript. "No," I told myself, "You can't just drop out of the class just because it got hard...just gut it out and keep trying. You can work past your difficulties with the instructor and you can improve your technique. Just keep going to class; it'll work out."

So, I stuck it out and I showed up for class every week (except the one where Billie disappeared one morning). I'm not great at drawing, that much I admit. And the way I went about things more often than not met with great opposition from my instructor (even though I thought I was following the instruction he had given me...but no this doesn't apply to THIS drawing; or I might have tried a technique and was pleased with my results and progress, but HE hated it). Still, I showed up every week and gave it my best shot, even though my gut was screaming at me not to.

For ignoring my instincts, I was awarded a C in my drawing class.

Of course it's not the end of the world. Even though I've lost the 4.0 GPA, it's still a 3.89 (and I have a lot of friends who'd whap me upside the head for complaining about that). I guess I'm just gutted because we were told we were being graded against ourselves (as opposed to being graded against the other students). Grading against myself, I certainly wasn't expecting another A (I had consistently gotten A's from this instructor in my other painting classes, despite my poor drawing skills), but I thought I gave a B performance at worst.

I guess the biggest lesson I will take away from the Fall '04 term is to LISTEN TO MY INSTINCTS.