Literally. No words for this title. I anticipate quite a large ramble but to sum it up in one sentence?? Im not so sure...
Over the past 3 weeks I have been enrolled in quite a full on course at St. Martins College of the Arts in London doing the Interior Design Portfolio course.
Overall I am so happy I did it but I'm also really disappointed in the College and because my disappointments are quite independent and short I'm going to list them.
1. The teachers just assume your rich because your at the school.
- Over the past 3 weeks I cannot even remember the amount of times one of the teachers called me a princess.
- On the very first day said as part of his introduction "I know some of you have just put this course on daddy's credit card..."
AND
- One day we did an exercise to do a little class bonding. All students had to stand at one side of the classroom and the male teacher would ask a number of questions. If you relate to the question then you walk to the other side of the room. Here were some of the questions (FYI these are all the questions bar 2) "walk the room if you have a car". "Walk the room if you have spent over 100 pounds over the past 48 hours".. "walk the room if you catch public transport".....like seriously why don't you just ask us what our account numbers are and just print off a bank statement?!?!?
2. When students explained their design ideas both teachers made faces during their explanations OR imitated them to the rest of the class afterwards.
This irritated me the worst because it made people feel scared to share their opinions. Lucky I have a bit of Chutzpah as they say (loosely translated as balls/guts) and I started not to care what they thought and just went with what I thought was right. But it made me upset because people were so nervous to speak in front of the class! and that is probably the worst teaching morals I have ever come across. It came to a point where I approached them mid second week during lunch and calmly and logically explained to them how unprofessional they were being. In hindsight it was a test to their maturity on how they took it. I wasn't rude and I don't feel I came across as a 'princess'. I merely let them know that we were trying and that it's really disconcerting when they make faces and imitate us whilst were trying to talk to the class. Needless to say they held their heads high and took it in stride. The female teacher really seemed like she was trying to improve but the male one just didnt, for lack of better words, give a shit. He's the type of guy that just thinks the world of himself and cant imagine making room for what anyone else thins about him. Oh well.
3. There was no structure.
Gosh this was irritating, especially because it was an expensive course and would only be logical to receive a course outline. But to no avail. At the end of the first week I asked if we would ever receive one and the response was "no, it will just limit your creativity, you wont understand it and then you'll just fight me on it"....in other words, 'we dont have plan and I dont want to make a course syllabus so no, your not getting one'.
4. The male teacher was late most days
Usually I wouldn't care. Its a summer course, a short course, pretty laid back so...
But on the first day he took about 10 minutes explaining to us that its so unbelievably rude to show up late especially with a latte in hand and to just "not do it" rather just don't come....Ironically he was the one usually late...and never even showed up for the Thursday and Friday of the first 2 weeks. Strangely, the other teacher never spoke about it or even acknowledged his absence...it was really strange....
5. They never explained anything.
Nothing was ever explained!!! how frustrating that was!!!!!! mainly because we always got in trouble for our inability to complete the task correctly. Like seriously? On the first day the female teacher even said "now we do this task every year and no-one seems to get it right" my initial thought was MAYBE ITS NOT US?? MAYBE YOUR NOT EXPLAINING IT? But no, we were treated like 5 year old for not understanding them.
6. They always contradicted each other
One teacher told us to do one thing, then the other teacher would ask us why we were doing that and it was just a cycle from there on in. So confusing, and again, we would get in trouble for not doing the right thing even though one of the teachers told us to do that in the first place.
Example:
Context: we were making a model of a staircase railing in the building.
Female teacher to student: The model has to be in 3D, make the glass in 3D
Student spends nearly 10 minutes remaking the glass.
Male teacher to student: "what are you doing with the glass? why don't you just cut out a square of paper? your doing it all wrong"
Student is stunned, irritated that she has just spent time remaking the glass for nearly 10 minutes.
Student: "female teacher told me to do this"
Female teacher: "no I didn't, I said the whole model has to be in 3D"
All students: eyes rolling.
7. Favouritism
Now this one is really just stupid because honestly I don't mind teachers having favourites and frankly I think its inevitable. But the male teacher grew quite fond of one of the girls in my class (and I mean in the
MOST platonic way possible, also because I'm 100009999% sure he's gay) But he was laughing at something on his phone with the other teacher in the studio whilst we worked (just as a side point we were screamed at like 5 year olds and called princesses if we were on our phones in the studio) But it was so funny that he went to the other side of the room (all students watching, drawn in from the laughter) to show his favourite student, in front of the whole class what was so funny on his phone....it was then I rode him off. From that point I just viewed him as immature and unprofessional.
8. The course was just not what it was advertised as
I really don't mind this one so much. The course was meant to be in interior design but they didn't even get interior designers to be our teachers. They got product designers and so we did close to no interior design but rather spent our time making architectural models so the course was really more interior architecture. Having said that, I probably wouldn't have ever enrolled in an interior architecture course. So by default it was great new information but again, not what I signed up for.
9. Time division
This just made no sense to me. We spent the first week on finding our brands. The second week on making our prototype model and had TWO DAYS of the final week to make our final model. How the hell does that make any sense?!?!?!?! no-one finished and they ended up pushing the deadline back a day. They also just gave up and let us do the rest of the course at our own pace.
10. Thoughtless.
This also was a big hit for me. Most of the time they gave us a task they refused to help us get to the end and just assumed that we should know what to do. Yet they reworded that sentence to a more PC version that sounded something like this "do what you want and then we'll discuss it" or "its your design, don't ask us". But when it came to presenting our ideas (remember point number 2 about making faces and imitating) more often than not we did it "wrong" or our work was "boring" or "unintellectual". Seriously, this is a summer course....ease the F up people!
BUT the worst time this came into play was Monday of the final week. we needed to go to a 4D shop to buy props for our final models.
Did we have time to think about what materials would work with our brands? NOPE, we were just supposed to "find inspiration in the shop" aka we have wasted your time and cant do that anymore.
So we go to the shop after class in our own time and go buy our own stuff.
Side note: This was not in the course outline, that we needed to go shopping for a model that most of us cant take home because we live over seas...
BUT THE WORST was that we all came back to class the next day and it was all; "no you cant use that its paint", "no you cant use that its too heavy", "no you cant use that because you need to make it yourself". COULD THEY NOT HAVE TOLD US WHAT
NOT TO BUY BEFORE WE WENT TO THE STORE????! No, because as much as they treated us like idiots most of the time they were the true idiots. Not making sense, getting us in trouble for their inability to teach, treating us like 5 year olds, having favourites and tripping over their own words. Sorry but if I was asked to recommend this course I would say find somewhere else...geese I forgot how mad this course made me.
But number 11 definitely takes the cake
11. Total wifi crash
Today (last day of the course) was a complete and utter fail. It was the day we were supposed to present our portfolio (course title) to the class at 2pm. By 12:30 the wifi in the school had crashed. Everything in the school is run by wifi and wirelessly, including the printers. So we were unable to print off our portfolios and ended up cancelling the presentation. I literally walked away from this PORTFOLIO course, without a complete portfolio....
We were offered to come back in on Monday, but fortunately I will be sipping sangrias on San Sebastian's beach with this course long gone from my mind.
In saying that, I am happy with what I made (even though a lot of creativity was punched in the face by the teachers and most students ended up with products only because that was what the teachers liked).
The female teacher did a complete turn around after I tried talking to the them at lunch. She offered to sit with me and help me with a private project I was working on. She became more friendly, complimented students, gave them positive reinforcement and I know a lot of students really grew to like her. I know I did and I'm actually kind of sad that I'll never see her again.
As for the male teacher?? well, some of the students and I let of steam after class one night whilst working late in the studio. We watched some of his youtube clips....in one, he's in his underpants....after that I couldn't take him seriously and just laughed every time he tried to insult my work or acted like a complete ignoramus....
This class brought out the best and the worst in me.
See the next post for my work progress. No words, promise!
