Regina De Rozario: Notes, pictures, and other fragments

It's now three weeks into the new school semester and I am still not used to the early mornings and long days. Goodbye to "lazy summer", days of sleeping in, vegging out in front of the telly, and softening on the Internet (I've finally brought myself to uninstalling all those insidiously addictive game applications from my Facebook account).

My break since the Graduation Show has not been totally unproductive. Though I didn't blog about it, I did spend a great amount of time running around, and meeting people, for fun as well as for school and work.

A quick re-cap of what's still in my memory bank:

The meetings with the HR people from NHB and NAFA for my scholarship and teaching interviews were stressful. I didn't get the scholarship, but I got the job, so at least there's a little bit of money that's coming my way.

Was I disappointed at not getting the scholarship? Honestly, yes, but on some level, I knew I had not wowed them at all at the interview, so I wasn't surprised. Thinking about it now, I was more upset at how long they took to tell me (2 months, though they said they would tell me the following week). Jae told me to keep the two-line rejection letter. Something to spur me on, I suppose.

Thankfully, the teaching thing is turning out to be quite interesting. It's quite a challenge, especially since I've been away from a classroom-type instructional setting for a while.

YP, who designed the course outline, has left the content pretty much up to me. While this does give me a lot of freedom to adjust the content to the classes' level of understanding, on the other hand, it would help me a lot to have a little more structure and guidance on how to assess this level of understanding. I'm the kind of teacher that prefers to give her students individual attention, suss out what their strengths and interests are and see how thay can take it further. It's just a little bit harder with a group of 25.

The two groups are rather different, though both have a good mix of interesting characters. The later class seems quieter, though I wonder if it's because of the group mix, or the scheduling of the session (4 to 6pm, Friday. Plus, it's their only class of the day. If I was a student in that session, I'd have a higher expectation to learn something worth my while). In any case, I'm hopeful that this semester works out for all of us, and that they don't end up too overwhelmed or underwhelmed by what I bring to the sessions.

As for my own studies, it's progressing, albeit slowly. Susie Lingham and Ho Hui May will be my advisors for my thesis and practice respectively. So far, I've had discussions about the title and focus of my project, which will look at the practice of activating public spaces in Singapore. In the process of my work, I hope to develop some material (a book perhaps) documenting public art in Singapore, and the different ways in which spaces have been used to engage the public in art. I'll also be developing some large-scale public works of my own, the prospect of which is scary as it is exciting.

It's all a bit of a muddle in my head at the moment, but I hope to take the next month or so to sort it out.

As I've mentioned in my previous post, Terminus is currently making its rounds, thanks to all the nice people who thought of the work and wanted to include it in their various showcases. I'll be speaking at the ROJAK screening and presenting the video, as well as some other photography work done as Perception3. Do come by and say hello to me and Jae. We'd love to have a chat.