In my continuing series of CoronaWorld oral histories, I interview The Girlfriend’s eldest child, who this week graduated from a private New York City university with a bachelor’s degree in fine arts. I edited our 30-minute conversation for clarity.
Me: Describe the transition in your semester once CoronaWorld arrived.
Student: It was pretty weird. Everything felt surreal, especially because my mom got sick early on, and all of a sudden I was cooped up in the apartment with my brother instead of my mom. [The Girlfriend stayed isolated from her family for a month.] So she was strangely absent, and I had to manage that and be a grown-up and make sure everyone did their house chores while I was still doing school stuff.
The normal semester ended for me right after I had my senior art show [on March 3], which had been pretty intense. Then I took a rest for a week, and then we had Spring Break [starting March 14], and then everything got shut down. I had a bunch of ideas for projects I was going to do for the rest of the semester, and I was excited and hopeful and meeting with professors about what I would be making after my show. We still had close to three months to make stuff. And it all melted away and turned into nothing.
Me: Did your work habits change?
Student: It was less that I had to change than that everything changed around me, and it was hard to catch up.
One of the reasons I chose this school was because it’s different from a standard education. I still had to learn to adjust to its system, but it’s much friendlier to my learning experience, which is complicated because I have a learning disability. And I was able to figure that out over four years, and I saw my grades get better every semester. I learned where the best places are for me to work; if I’m going to tackle a project I should do it this way so I don’t get overburdened, or end up worrying about motivation, or indecision, or technological problems. I figured out how to tailor methods to my way of learning. And then it all fell apart.
I have a lot of trouble getting work done at home, and one of my four-year strategies was to work long hours at school, both on my art and on things like essay writing. I stay focused there. Everyone there is focused on schoolwork; it’s a generative place to be; there are interesting projects all around. So it was very strange to be stuck at home.
Spring Break started, but it was not fun. It was more like, “There’s nothing to do.” All my friends on the internet were saying, “There’s nothing to do.” Then dealing with school obligations was really weird. I had to write a 12-page paper for one class; I had to make art for several classes. Making art at home was super hard, when I was scrounging for materials. And the stress levels were really strange, because normally I’d get stressed about finals and school and that would get me motivated to get out of the house, to go to school and bust my butt and get to work. But this was a strange level of stress. I felt incapacitated, like I couldn’t do anything. I felt sluggishly unable to make decisions. I slept all day. It was the opposite of fun; it was very upsetting.
Maybe it’s just that I’m not good at developing new systems for learning on the fly. But a month in I became very uncomfortable and anxious. Like: I can’t do anything, this sucks, I’m graduating, this is a really important moment in my life, and time is washing away and I can’t do anything to make it good. And then I’d read about people under quarantine who were being massively creative and 500 times more productive than normal: “I produced an album!” “Look at my new book!” These stories were supposed to be inspirational, and they just made me feel bad. And I know a lot of it was bullshit. But it was hard to stay motivated, and it was hard to be creative when we had no clear direction. The professors didn’t know what materials we had at home, so they’d say, “Do whatever you want!”
So for a while, it all started to fall apart. But at least I was able to not fail my senior year. In the end, that’s all that mattered.
Me: What was one project that you’d wanted to finish in the last months of school?
Student: At the beginning of quarantine I planned to make a zine: a book where I’d make all the paper myself and print art on all the pages. It was about a fantasy world I’ve been coming up with, gods I’m researching. And it kind of fell apart and didn’t happen like I’d planned. In the last week I was frantically printing pages, and it felt sucky because I had two months and I’d been talking about it every single day, and in the end I could barely get 16 pages done. And I got angry at myself for not being productive.
Me: What were your classes like? Were you doing videoconferencing?
Student: Some of my classes did. Those were hard, because all we were doing was talking about ideas on Zoom. For me, Zoom is the worst. It just splits my attention.
Some professors had Instagram accounts where we could post art before class, so others could look at it. But almost no one was able to create anything properly. Some students had spaces and resources, but I had neither. I couldn’t work in my room — there’s no place to work. Once my mom was sick, I could work on the dining room table, but that wasn’t enough. A few people had garages where they were casting plaster and pouring concrete; they do that, and I’m showing my little pencil drawing, and it feels like I’m being lazy because I’m not posting anything impressive on the professor’s private Instagram page.
And classes that had been in studio became critique only, which was annoying, because people are only talking about ideas. You look at a few pictures and spend 30 minutes talking about them but not really learning anything. People can say, “Yeah, the picture looks really cool,” but they couldn’t give advice because they didn’t know what resources you have. It felt a bit like a scam, honestly.
Me: What do you mean by that?
Student: A lot of students are trying to petition the school for refunds. If we’re not there, with the professors and with each other, the institution’s not real anymore. Should we be paying thousands of dollars for Zoom calls? We could get on Zoom with each other and talk about our work and accomplish the same thing. We aren’t paying for resources, because there are none. We’re paying for video access to a professor who may or may not care about your work. You just can’t get the same level of interaction online.
For me, a large part of the reason I was succeeding at school was because I was engaged with the material and technique of print making. That was my whole thing; I took all the print making courses and learned lots of techniques; that’s what was valuable to me. Some people cared about conceptual ideas about artwork, and if you did, you could still get that feedback. But I’m at school to learn to use the materials and learn techniques. Critique is not that big a deal to me, except for a few professors who were master printers, who had skills I wanted to learn. The others, who said it looks like a specific period of Marcel Duchamp, of if you’re thinking about X then you should read Y — that’s not relevant to me. I can Google that. So the studio classes lost value.
We had one lecture class with visiting speakers, and that was interesting. But it was still hard to stay engaged just listening to someone talk on a Zoom call for two hours at 8 p.m. I wish I’d had more lecture-based content, but even then I ended up feeling like I couldn’t pay attention to what people were saying because I was drained from being on Zoom calls all the time.
I would tell any prospective student at any institution not to go to school next semester if it’s going to be online-only. It won’t be worth it. The institutions don’t have the ability to reconfigure their education model by September. And it’s impossible to learn from Zoom like that. A large part of my education was communicating with the other students as well as the teachers. And in my online classes there was almost no interaction. The students were all muted until the teacher was done talking; you couldn’t ask students or the professor to show you something or teach you a technique. There was no chance to develop communication or camaraderie. The whole thing needs to be changed.
Me: Was anything better about online learning?
Student: Nothing. Well, I might have been late to fewer classes because I didn’t have to do my hour commute to campus. But I didn’t like having the stupid fake communication. I didn’t want to do all the performative stuff when I’m sitting in bed in my underwear. The tone of the space I’m in and the tone of the conversations I’m having are completely different. If I’m in my bedroom I’m not interested in listening to people talk about art for five hours.
Me: You had an online graduation this week. How was that?
Student: The campus did it through a YouTube premiere, and then my department had a Zoom call. It was OK, not great. I wasn’t that hyped up about graduation to begin with, and because I had no expectations I didn’t feel like got robbed.
I was happy that my mom put together a mini-Zoom call with family and friends afterward. It was really nice to see and hear from everyone I hadn’t talked to in three months. Quarantine has been really isolating. Communicating online is not my best skill, and it was nice to connect with family and friends. But I didn’t get to show my family and the people I love the campus where I spent four years, and that would have been more fulfilling than any ceremony.
Me: Has CoronaWorld changed your post-graduation plans?
Student: Plan A was to get a regular job at an art institution or a studio, but no institutions or studios are open. Plan B was to get a master’s in education in the accelerated New York Teaching Fellows program, which would have guaranteed I had a job in the fall. But they cancelled the program. So all of my employment plans got blown to dust.
So instead I’m moving to San Francisco, where I’ll live with my partner and their family. The virus hasn’t hit as badly in the Bay Area. And I don’t think I’ll be able to get a job in New York City. Having to fight through everyone to get the five retail jobs available in New York right now — California just seems like it might be easier.
And I don’t want to be cooped up in this apartment, which has been really sucky and annoying. I don’t feel comfortable going outside here, and we don’t have any other space. My partner’s family has a large house and a backyard and they live near a national park. It’s not like Prospect Park, which is always packed full of people. A change seems really nice right now.
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