Thoughts from the swimming pool no 7

Today I swam 1250m - my thoughts while swimming were so interesting I did two extra lengths in my warm-up!

We had a lecture on Art Therapy, which was most interesting, and I am considering what to do once I have completed my degree in 2014.  Art Therapy MA is 2 or 3 years, and about £10,000 fees in total. This is a lot of money, and once I have my degree, I want to spend time with Jim. Alternatively, they do a £1,200 one year certificate course (which does not licence you to practice as an art therapist), one evening a week for a thorough introduction prior to deciding whether to do the MA.  Food for thought.

We had another session refining our artist statements.  This is where I had some profound thoughts in the pool this morning.  My second draft artist statement had feedback centering around: subjective -v- objective; key words of heritage, strong women, traditional and digital, of my age.   So this morning's swim got me thinking about the title of the statement, and I was ruminating about using traditional hand drawn illustrative techniques, combined with digital print.  Traditional and Digital.  Or Contemporary and Traditional.  I have this huge need to use my hands, to achieve the state of flow when hand and brain are at one, but I am also a modern woman who uses the technology of my age - but only as a tool to my stated purpose and no more.  I expect to get to draft 12 before the Artist Statement is complete.  But I'm getting there.

Yesterday I went to class and all the full-timers were saying they had their essay results.  I had gone on line before coming out, and mine were not listed.  I queried this with the tutors, and discovered that although I had followed the full-timers programe for the essay, as a part-timer my essay result would be published next semester.  However, Antje, our programme leader, made enquiries and gave me the result.  78%!!!!  I was so stunned I could not be jubilant!  But how good is that!  I had been a bit worried about the conclusion that I had written because it seemed very long and somewhat verbose.  Obviously not as bad as I had thought.  Some of the youngsters were quite disappointed with their results, so I tried to be supportive to them, and saved my joy for when I got home to share with Jim.