Find That Silver Lining (and also a fish)

Hey hey!

So it's been a super long time (like, over a week or something.  That's a long time though right?) since my last post and I feel bad about that.  I don't really draw or doodle much outside of class these days because any free time I have is usually spent in the studio working on school stuff or trying to maintain a social life with my wonderful friends.  I also haven't had a whole lot on my mind to post about either, but obviously this overly-wordy paragraph is evidence that that has changed.

So a little over a week ago the 4th project was due in my 3D media class and I have to say, it was not my best work.  Literally, it was the weakest project I have submitted in that class so far as the grades would clearly show.  Now I can only speak for myself here but I tend to be pretty dedicated and committed to my work and can get pretty anal when it comes to quality and all that.  Needless to say, this last project left me feeling kind of discouraged and more than a little disappointed in myself.  This is all normal though, no one can be great at everything or be at their very best ALL of the time.  But despite knowing this I still manage to beat myself up pretty badly about this kind of thing, viewing it as a sort of personal failure.  This is where I start to get to the point.

While it is perfectly fine to feel bad and wallow in your own self-pity for a little while, there will come that moment where enough is enough and you just have to pick yourself up and move on.  Being a fairly serious athlete in the past, this is a lesson I have had to learn time and time again.  There are going to be times where you lose, and when that happens the best thing you can do is think about what you can improve on, shake off those bad feelings and move on to the next challenge.  And isn't that really the silver lining here?  I mean, for anyone who is even kind of serious about improving at, well, anything really, sometimes the most valuable lessons that we learn that contribute to our overall experience and skill come from letdown.

So I guess my main message here is:  don't beat yourself up too badly over failure.  Don't let a bad grade or a sub-par project get you down for too long.  It happens to everyone.  The absolute worst thing you can do is dwell on it forever and let it scare you away from trying harder next time.  The best thing you can do is take from it what lessons you can and just chalk it up as some more good 'ol life experience.

Man.  How corny am I.
But just like my 'Talk to Your Profs!' post, even though this is something you hear a million times I still feel pretty strongly that it cannot be said enough.  It's harder than a lot of people think to actually take this kind of thing to heart.  I know I still have to work on it at times.
(It might just be me, but this particular subject really makes me think of the Disney movie Meet The Robinsons.  If you've ever seen it you totally know where I'm coming from).

So since I took the time to mention it I might as well show some pics of the piece of project 4 I wasn't totally disappointed with.  Keep in mind that this is only one of 4 separate pieces that made up this project.  The other three were just... eh.

One Fish

Two Fish

Uh, Three Fish

 ...Another Fish

Yeah, they're all the same Fish.

Finals are comin' right up and It. Is. CRUNCH TIME.  So don't expect another post for a while!  (There's a chance I'll spam a ton over Christmas break though, so try not to be too devastated).

ps.  project 5 is beating the crap out of my hands D:

pps.