lampworking

[jinian]

Lampworking class seriously sucked today. As I wept at the bus stop on the way home, I told Wim, "It's like falling in love with someone you've never met, and then meeting them and discovering there's no chemistry and their family is evil." I cried three times today and stifled it a few more. Granted, I am on the rag, but stuff has to be bad for me to cry that much.

I was clumsy, so that much of it is my fault. I've heard that some people gets clumsiness with PMS, and I don't usually have such a bad time with these things, so maybe I can blame my hormones. Yay, none of it is my fault. *sigh*

The first thing the teacher did that annoyed me was to shirk on telling us the safety procedures. We were expected to sign a release saying we'd read a handbook; the handbook never showed up, but he did read to us from a photocopied sheet very briefly after we were supposed to have signed and handed in out release forms. I refused. I was the only one to do so. After I'd heard the crummy safety walkthrough, I annotated my form to say that the policies had been verbally reviewed and signed it.

The second thing was that he did nothing for the first hour of the class but have us watch him sculpting a glass cat. Okay, I'm satisfied, you know how to do this. You've also proven that you do not know how to teach.

And after that, he basically turned us loose. There was only a rudimentary explanation of how to do things, but that didn't stop most of the people in the class; they all had prior glass experience. I floundered. I didn't have any ideas. I hadn't been expecting free work time, I wanted a class. Show us how to execute techniques, have us do projects and tell us how we're coming along, what we can do better, effective ways to set up the work area.

I spent quite some time waiting for class to be over.

It was easier to try before the first time I burned myself, which was also the first time I cried.

It is really hard to be the dumb one. Was I not nice enough to people in school who didn't get things? I hope I was always nice enough. Not that it would have mattered, because I still can't convince myself that Barb was really being nice and not laughing at me inside. I can't imagine having to go to school every day and feeling like I felt today. I kept going, but I don't think I would have the strength to do it for long. I might not go back tomorrow. I have never been so glad that I was good at school.

I thought I was going to love lampworking. I can still see that I would love it if I were being taught the way that I need to be taught. When I came back from icing my thumb and two of the other girls were making leaves like I'd been wanting to and not figuring out how to, I nearly cried again.

Oh, it was miserable. I can't even write about it. I got burned three times, none of which were really my fault. Who knew that any glass within a foot of the torch sucks up heat for the express purpose of crisping flesh? Probably the "instructor" did, huh? And once a shard of hot glass came from nowhere and flew down my shirt sleeve. I accidentally opened that blister rubbing it against the chair arm while typing a post to alt.poly. No one else got burned even once. Damn it all.

And at 5:00, half an hour before it was time to go, the bastard teacher (whom I don't even really dislike, he's just fucking inept and the results are awful) finally did what I'd wanted him to do. He assigned me a task: to make two hands before quitting time. So I did. I struggled a little with the first one, which I made as a fist; it wasn't proportioned quite right, but I liked it and its blotches of blue. The second one was hard for me too, and the fingers stuck together a little, but the proportions were just right and it looked good.

He never even looked at them.

Okay, self-pity girl is done for now. I have no idea whether I will go to the class tomorrow; I am doing a little better, and I know what to expect, but it's not a good class for me and I might be clumsy tomorrow, too. We'll see. I can always flee partway through.