It feels like yesterday that I told the Internet about my acceptance to grad school. In my time off after undergrad, I thought I was prepared and knew exactly how to handle my first semester, but it turns out, some things just won’t sink in until you’ve experienced them.

Here’s what I’ve learned the hard way this semester, and what I resolve to remember to do for the rest of my time here.

Start early, finish early.

I once wrote a post called “3 Ways I can be a Better Grad Student”. When I wrote this, it was fairly early on in the semester and I thought I would start implementing those ideas right away. I didn’t. At all. This testifies to one of the most important lessons I’ve learned in grad school so far, which is to start early. You don’t want to be the sucker (me) who is scrambling with not only writing but also preparing presentations three weeks before final papers are due. I had my bibliographies finished in September, but waited until November to start writing. Folks, this is a very bad idea. I started early, but I didn’t stick with it. Start early, finish early. Your mental health will thank you for it.

Have people you can confide in.

I had a pretty rough three weeks due to working on my papers at the last minute. My stress level was high and I was sleep deprived. Then, one of my papers got ripped apart, and I literally had an emotional breakdown in the bathroom. I was comforted by a couple sweet friends and (when I got home), my husband. I never thought I’d be the type to lose it over a professor’s feedback, but I did. Talking it through with my family and friends helped me realize that I had irrational expectations for myself and for the way I thought my professor would respond. In addition to having an emotional support network, having friends and family around that you can trust can be helpful if you need a fresh perspective on a paper you’re writing.

Strive for excellence, not perfection.

Perfectionism isn’t healthy, but it is prevalent in academia. My work will rarely be perfect, even though I want it to be. I don’t strive for perfection; I strive for excellence. If I’ve done something to the very best of my ability, that’s as perfect as I can get.

Don’t compare yourself to others (unless you’re going to do something about it).
My first instinct when I got here was to compare my academic level to that of my fellow students. This can be a good thing, for the sake of personal and professional improvement, but I wasn’t comparing myself to better myself. I was comparing myself just to pick myself apart and not doing anything to better myself based on what I saw in my fellow students. I’ve realized that my colleagues are all at different academic levels, because we all have different knowledge bases and skillsets. And that’s okay. I started to take note of what I liked about my fellow students’ work (we all present our papers in seminar) and now I’ve started trying to improve my own work.

Take time to relax.

I think it goes without saying that doing something relaxing helps our brains to reset and come back to projects with a fresh outlook. Get offline, unplug, spend some time disconnected from your computer, emails, obligations. Enjoy the vividness that comes from living in the moment.

Nurture your relationships.
Nurture your relationships with your fellow students, your professors, and your personal relationships. Make time to go out with friends or go to a professor’s office hours and try to get to know them. For me, this isn’t about networking, it’s about being able to feel like part of a whole.

Be thankful.
It’s easy for me to get stressed out, have an existential crisis, or feel insignificant within the larger scope of my department. I try to remind myself that I’m here for a reason, and that just me being here, in this teeny town, is something to be thankful for. I didn’t have to get accepted to graduate school, but I was, and I desperately wanted to be. I’m thankful for that and for how incredibly fortunate I am to be here.

Remember why you’re here.

This comic might seem morbid, but it has a grain of truth. I’m here to make a difference — in my department, first, and then, when I graduate to the “real” academic world, within the larger context of academia. The contributions I make to my department might not come for a while — a conference presentation here, a published article there — but they’ll add to the department’s own contributions to academia through admitting X graduate student. I need to be proactive about making that difference here, as no one will hand these opportunities to me.

For more on grad school life, visit my Tumblr, where I blog and offer advice to those who ask about going to graduate school in art history. I also wrote this short PDF guide for prospective art history graduate students. For those of you who might be taking your first ever art history course, I wrote this guide.

I’d also like to say that I finished my first semester of grad school with a grand total of 19,588 words, 78 pages, and 202 footnotes! The papers I mentioned in an earlier post were some of the funnest projects I’ve worked on so far, and I can hardly wait for Spring 2013 to start — but I’ll enjoy a nice break in the meantime.

Have a wonderful holiday season!

Tags: Art History, Grad school, Graduate School, life lessons, Personal, School, tips, UCLA, UDel

Today, I want to talk about triumph and the people who help us become who we are.

One of the major people in my life who took a chance on me and believed in me passed away a couple years ago. I never got to tell him that I got in to UCLA, when most of his colleagues told me I never would. I never got to tell him that I graduated from UCLA with all three of the honors that the College of Letters & Science offers. And I’ll never get to tell him that I was accepted to graduate school this year.

Mr. Spica taught AP Art History at my high school. In my senior year, I became extremely interested in this field and wanted to take the AP Art History course being offered. It was the second semester by the time enrollment opened up. The first semester covered art since the beginning of time (okay, not really) through the 15th century. Like any good teacher, Mr. Spica knew that usually the first semester of any course provides you with the foundational information you’ll need for the second semester. And thus, he was adamant that I not be allowed to enroll. I got a letter of recommendation from one of my teachers (who majored in art history in college). He still wouldn’t let me in, worried that my lack of knowledge would bring the rest of the class down and force the class to move at a slower pace. I told him that I would sit in his class until he enrolled me. This agreement worked.

My first day sitting in, he gave us a test. We were to write essays in response to slides on the screen within thirty minutes. I’d never written an art historical essay before, and I’d never seen most of the slides. I also had no idea what on earth an “art history” essay was – as if it could be any different than other essays! I remember one slide in particular, the gardens at Versailles. I had no idea why these gardens were designed as such, but  I could tell by the massive amount of land they take up and their rather ornate landscaping that whoever designed them did so as a visual and physical reminder of their power and wealth. Mr. Spica graded these essays on a scale of 0 to 5. I got a 1. My next “test” was the homework, what he called style sheets. Style sheets were charts that had an artist’s name, years active, art historical period, examples of their art, and descriptions of their style. These were graded on a scale of 1 to 10. I got a 10 on my first style sheet, and he decided to let me enroll in the class.

My fellow students told me that, with his monotone voice, I would fall asleep in Mr. Spica’s class. Some told me that it was excessively difficult and a waste of time. They were all wrong. Mr. Spica loved art history, and loved teaching it. I think his favorite was modern performance art. He went to the Hammer and LACMA frequently. For those of us who were taking the AP Art History exam, he gave us a special review night and bought us pizza. One of the most endearing things about Mr. Spica was his grading. He always graded all of our papers with a green gel pen. He was never without it.

The last day of class crept up on us. Mr. Spica did the same thing every year: the class played “art history Jeopardy.” The grand prize was a Toulouse-Lautrec kaleidoscope. The players quickly came down to me (the girl who missed half the course) and four girls who had been in the course for its full length. It was intimidating. I kept forgetting to say “What is ____” and the girls would collectively groan because I got the right answer but didn’t say it right and Mr. Spica graciously allowed my faults in proper game show procedure.

Somehow, I won art history Jeopardy. I beat out the entire class after being there for just one semester. No matter how silly this may sound, the moment I won art history Jeopardy in Mr. Spica’s twelfth grade AP art history class was an incredible triumph for me. I loved art history in a way that my other classmates didn’t. I was good at it. This small triumph confirmed it. No one, especially not Mr. Spica, thought I would win art history Jeopardy, and why should they? I think Mr. Spica’s mind was changed as he ceremoniously handed me the grand prize and announced that I must be a “space alien” because I became so good at something I had no previous experience with.

Mr. Spica wrote in my yearbook in his favorite green pen. I was so proud to be his favorite space alien.

Mr. Spica coached girl’s tennis at my high school and would often go to UCLA’s tennis matches. I worked at Coffee Bean by UCLA, and it was here, a year or so after graduation, that I told him I received a 4 (out of 5) on the AP Art History exam and that I was majoring in art history in college. He wasn’t surprised.

That was the last time I saw him.

I said at the beginning, this post is about triumph and the people who believe in us. Mr. Spica was cautious to take a chance on letting me into his class, but eventually, he did, and because he believed in my potential, I grew exponentially in a field that, some years later, I can’t imagine not being in for the rest of my life. He introduced me to the basics of art history and critiqued my writing with unabashed severity, sometimes writing “No!!” with his green pen or enclosing portions of my essays with a large, underlined, green zero. I wish I could thank him for his honest critiques. And I wish even more that I could tell him of my latest “Jeopardy” moment of triumph: getting into graduate school.

I’ve had many supportive teachers (professors) since graduating high school. I will rave forever about how incredibly generous and wonderful the professors in UCLA’s art history department are. It’s no secret that UCLA has been one of the best experiences of my life, and that I credit them with teaching me how to be a scholar. It’s also no secret that I want to make art history my career. And, thanks to the wonderful training I received at UCLA and above all, the support from my family, friends, and professors, I’ll be able to.

Beginning Fall 2012, I will be studying at my dream program, which has what I believe is one of the strongest Early Modern art history programs in the country: the University of Delaware. I am so excited to begin my studies there, specializing in (of course) Italian Baroque art!

Knowledge is the light of the mind

Tags: Academia, Graduate School, UCLA, UDel

True Bruin: Integrity, Excellence, Accountability, Respect.

As my academic life at UCLA draws to an end, I thought I would post some of the pictures I’ve taken during my time there. I couldn’t ask for a better education or university experience in my wildest dreams. UCLA was everything I wanted it to be: challenging, with excellent professors who pushed their students to excel while building relationships with them; the university provided opportunity to get involved and meet people; and it had high honor code.

The hallowed side entrance of Royce Hall.

I love the way that the light makes the hallways of Royce look so mysterious and hallowed. I only had one class in Royce, French 3, during my first quarter in Fall 2008.

Psalm 119:18

I discovered this quote from the Psalms by accident one day as I was walking from South to North campus. It graces the tympanum of the Humanities Building. I love it.

Upon entering Royce Hall.

The original quad of buildings (Royce Hall, Powell Library, Haines, and Humanities) were modeled after the Basilica di Sant’Ambrogio in Milan. When I went to Milan, I took over 400 pictures of every last detail of the basilica, and the architects of UCLA did a wonderful job. The frescoes that don the vaulted arches of Royce are of people representing different fields: Chemistry, Languages, Drama, Literature, History, Physics, etc., rather than religious figures.

Dodd Hall, where most of my Art History classes took place.

The majority of my Art History courses took place in Dodd Hall. It suffered flooding a couple times in my two years at UCLA, making the first-story classrooms unusable during Summer Quarter 2009.

Powell from a distance.

Powell had a few books that I needed for some of my papers, but the libraries that I nearly lived in were the Arts Library and Young Research Library (not pictured). These last two libraries had every single book I ever needed and then some! I often had to cut back on the amount of sources I used because otherwise, my papers would be full of interesting but unnecessary tangents.

The infamous Janns Steps that keep UCLA students fit!

I hated these steps, despite how iconic they are. Luckily, there is an alternate route that stems from BruinWalk that students can take to get from South to North campus. There are less steps, but more hills.

In December 2008, I wrote about my first quarter at UCLA. To my surprise, that first quarter is my favorite quarter, simply because I was taught instantly what it takes to be a UCLA student. Almost a year later, in Spring 2009, I started to understand and learn more about what it takes to be a “real” art historian – a scholar, thanks to Dell Upton’s Art Historical Methodologies class (Art Hist 100, for future Bruins.) Doing my Senior Thesis was the best part of my entire UCLA experience, though. I loved swimming in books in my room and trying to put pieces together in order to argue my point, and effectively prove it. Coincidentally (or not), the final quarter of my Senior Thesis (Spring 2010), I took a New Testament History course. In actuality, it was a Writing 2 course, and my T.A. was… an amazing teacher, hilarious, and BRUTAL. But his tough edits of my papers for his course helped me to self-edit my own thesis and double-check my word conciseness and take out any “interesting but unnecessary” tangents. I was lucky to have an incredible Thesis Advisor who supported me, understood my ramblings during office hours and helped me put my rambling ideas into concise words that made sense.

Powell Library seen from Royce Hall.

The Art History major is well designed at UCLA. I was required to know three languages by the time I left. I chose Spanish, French, and Italian. German is really the ultimate Art Historical language for what I’m interested in, but I didn’t have time to take it. I really like that students are required to take non-Western art courses. I was really interested in them and did really well, but I couldn’t ever be a non-Western art historian because of the language requirements. My favorite? Indian art with Dr. Brown (he shows a clip from Indiana Jones and dresses like him – how awesome is that?), and “From Mongols to Mughals” (also Indian art, 114F for all you future Bruins.) Taking non-Western art courses gave me a much wider working knowledge of world history and of art history as a cohesive whole, and I was surprised at how many times I said in a class, “Well in X class, we learned about Y tradition… etc.” It was excellent. Some of my fellow classmates thought that the major was too hard or time consuming or they just wanted to take courses in their area of interest, but I loved it. The only thing that could improve the program is to make a museum studies course and Art History 100 (Methods & Theory) required for graduation from the major. Knowing how to do the different art historical methods and knowing about different theories made my papers, from Spring 2009 onward, that much better. I can’t imagine not taking that course, and my upper divisions assumed that students already knew those basic things, so if you didn’t, then tough luck!

What about practical, non-academic things, you wonder? Well! UCLA has an amazing Career Center with counselors who put up with my crazy, worried, detailed questions about resumes, interviews, cover letters… They helped me with word choice, formatting, and not worrying. I joined the UCLA Alumni Association as well, which threw an awesome Senior Sendoff cocktail attire party. I love dressing up, so the dress code made it that much more fun. The Alumni Association has UCLA “chapters” all over the country so that (almost) no matter where you live, you can meet other Bruins. It’s like a big, nationwide UCLA family. I have to yet to actually move anywhere and see if my theory is true, but that’s the way it was described to me! Ackerman Union has everything you could ever want in a store. It’s like a mini-mall filled with UCLA gear, a Clinique makeup counter, shoes, skateboards, books galore, and a little grocery mart, and even a flower kiosk. Plus, there’s a Jamba Juice. I realize this all seems shallow, but it becomes important when, say, you’re about to go to the Senior Sendoff and forgot a brush and mascara at home… Or when you want to plan a trip to Europe and need to speak to a travel agent like, right now! (Sadly, the STA Travel store in Ackerman closed, but there is one on Westwood Blvd.) … Or when you want to see a movie but don’t have enough money: $2 movie nights (periodically) to the rescue! … See? Ackerman has everything, except Starbucks … but that’s a few blocks away in the ClubMed Cafe and you can use your BruinCard. Coffee is important to college students! Did I mention that Powell Library has NightPowell, where students can read/study late into the night? I never did this because I didn’t live on campus, but if I did, I would have lived in Powell. During finals week, Kerckhoff gives out free coffee and I think Powell is open 24/7 for at least a couple days of Finals. UCLA has a gorgeous sculpture garden too, where you can sit and relax and listen to the sounds of high school tour groups, birds chirping, lawns being mowed, and the occasional crying baby. Although there are times when it is very quiet. Once you learn class schedules, you can go there when it will be quiet! UCLA is all about timing… Getting to class on time, getting to student dining in time to avoid the crowds, signing up for classes right as the clock strikes your enrollment time, managing your coursework, leaving time for fun and getting to Diddy Reise at specific times throughout the day so you can get the freshest cookies! …

I am a UCLA graduate!

Have I convinced you that UCLA is a magical place and that you should be there? I hope so.

Tags: Life, School, UCLA