Woohoo

To begin, catering on Sunday went absolutely wonderfully. I even surprised myself. I hit some magical cooking Zen spot and was up until after 3am on Saturday chopping vegetables, arranging platters, and just getting it done.

I got to the pier earlier than anyone else and began panicking, since I knew I had scallops threatening to spoil and vegetables dying to wilt. Fortunately the day captain arrived before I got myself too worked up, and I got to work. I had two people working with me, wonderful ladies named Jeanette and Rhoda. Rhoda was hilarious and reminded me so much of my Grandma Jean in her wit and that cute little sparkle in her personality. It was a genuine pleasure working with them.

The only real trauma of the day was the sterno debaucle... as in even though I saw a stack of sterno candles on Friday, there were none to be found by Sunday morning. I went to the new Fairway across the street, which has been open all of a month and literally has everything in the planet in eighteen varieties, but since they've reorganized the store as many days as they've been open, no one could find the sterno candles. Managers and stock boys were about to get into a fist-fight and a large screaming match began between a floor guy and a customer service person about why no one updates the store layout diagrams when they make the decisions to move entire sections. Long story short, I didn't get them, after a near-tears half hour.

Fortunately this awesome girl Amy and her husband showed up to save the day and drove me a few blocks away to a dollar store that had a whole aisle of sterno trays and candles. Of course I have to wonder, if the captain knew these items were there the whole time, why she sent me to the tier of hell that is Fairway on a Sunday morning, but that lapse of sense only cost me a low-grade panic attack that very few people knew about.

Once all the food was set up and I had resolved the stupid sterno situation (cause seriously, my apartment and the entire hallway smelled so strongly of sausage and scallops that I was sure it would linger for days and there was no way all that cooking would be for naught), things went perfectly well the rest of the day.

The higher-ups of the organization were all really pleased and kept coming by all day to compliment me on how professional and appealing everything looked. Everyone was really impressed with these little signs I made that took all of 15 min in Photoshop -- to the point where I have to email a template over so everyone can use them from now on. The customers were thrilled with the food selection and quality - considering it's a voluntary donation and people came back with $5 bills to tell me how much they enjoyed it, I think I did okay. I was surprised how much people were charmed by the cucumber sandwiches, and of course the chocolate-covered strawberries made a lot of days.

The women working with me were thrilled that they barely had to cut anything up or arrange food on platters. I didn't know it, but usually food supervisors bring bags full of ingredients and have their workers spend the day cutting, the way I'd spent my evening before. Instead, they were able to chat up customers and enjoy the wine selection, which made for much more pleasant company all day long.

I can't exactly explain it, but that hospitable part of me which likes to make people comfortable and welcome with food was deeply satisfied with this whole experience, to the point where I could see myself being very happy running a restaurant or catering business. And of course that whole Martha Stewart wannabe aspect of my personality was thrilled that every single dish got rave reviews - it's pretty exciting to be called a great cook countless times over one day.

At any rate, even though I only took three shitty pictures, it was quite a sight and I was thrilled with how great everything looked and, well, was. As I was packing up, the organization people all asked if I would do it again for the next show, and I said that as long as I'm able to (since the show spans the time I am in Costa Rica), it'd be my pleasure.

Second bit of good news - I got an A on my midterm!!! At first I was a bit concerned - she gave our exams back just before break and I didn't have a calculator. My score was 34.25/36, which is kind of hard math to do in one's head, and I always get deceived by seemingly small differences plus some lingering thing in my head was saying that 4/5 was 80% so I shouldn't be too pleased yet. After an uncomfortably long exercise in long division, I had to call Eric to confirm and it turns out I got a 95, which is not bad at all.

Some of the other students failed miserably, so she gave them take-home versions. She said to one girl, "The images are in your book - I want you to look them up and just write anything about them so I can give you a passing grade," and the girl actually had the nerve to bitch about it over break, saying she'd already taken the exam, why should she have to do it again. There is a guy who sits behind me and has several intensely annoying habits which include kicking my seat at random intervals, eating chips for an ungodly length of time every single class, playing games on his cell phone with the sound on, and loudly sighing way too frequently with nacho-cheese breath. He just plain skipped the exam and had some lame discussion with her about being sick, so he too will be given a take-home exam pass/fail. I'm not sure why these kids aren't more concerned or don't realize that when a significant part of your grade will be pass/fail, your course grade is not going to be stellar.

It does honestly concern me because I've been considering teaching when I finish school, and I'm not sure I could handle a class this lazy and immature. We had a field trip to the Met which was meant to serve as both a review and a really great opportunity to see the work in person with our professor, and only 3 of us showed up! I mean, we have a paper to write about it, and most people didn't bother coming! Toward the end, 2 more guys showed up and one of them kept taking phone calls, so he missed almost all of what she said anyway. I can't imagine how that must have felt for my professor, as she had spent a really long time preparing her lecture and organizing our tour. The three of us really appreciated it and I definitely got a ton out of it -- my paper is going to be a breeze once I find citations for the notes I took -- but still, we all felt kind of embarrassed for the rest of the class dissing her. I know that when I was an undergraduate, I did a lot of stupid and irresponsible things, but then again, I made sure not to take any graduate classes where the level of expectations would be so much higher. It's confusing to me that the undergrad art history majors seem to consider graduate classes as just advanced blow-offs, but it also now makes a lot more sense that they require two more advanced degrees and years of experience to do any real work in art history.

Seeing these kids, I am also torn because I wanted to ask for a position grading for undergrad classes next semester, where you have to attend the survey classes and then grade tests and papers for the professor. I was all excited, thinking I could make them online study guides and hold review sessions and do all this hokey enthusiastic stuff... but now I'm fairly confident it would all be a waste of time. I also think I would get really impatient if I saw them goof off through the class period then demonstrate zero applied knowledge on an exam - I know I couldn't grade for spite, but it's certainly tempting to give them a decoddling. The deciding factor is of course that I didn't take a lot of art history as an undergrad (seeing as I was trying to major in neuroscience and then studio arts with a minor), so I will get to essentially audit all the survey classes I missed, so long as they don't disrupt my schedule too much. The faculty at Pratt is so amazing, though, that I consider it a genuine privilege to sit in on their lectures and get to interact with them, so the more the better.

With that, I have to get going on my research paper. It's one of those heart-breakingly beautiful days, so I kind of hate to spend a chunk of it at the library, but I'm hoping to get to New Jersey this weekend for Father's Day, so the paper must get done now.