I was just looking up an old art school professor I had, the only one that was worth a damn, and came across this page of student evaluations of him.

Man, as much I hated art school, that first year spent in Cliff’s class fucking kicked ass. I’ve never seen so many people push so hard towards a goal in my life. And it was always such a struggle, and that’s what made it so good. I always loved it how people would spend like all this time on a project, it would come out like shit, and then he would just say that it wasn’t worth talking about, and that person wouldn’t even get critiqued that week. Man, that was the fucking kiss of death when that happened. You know, I always like to go on and on about all the bad things of art school, but the best thing that can happen is you can have a really good teacher, who really knows how to push people, and doesn’t let up for a second. And then everyone just makes this monumental push forward. And everyone is exerting all this pressure on everybody else, and it’s just so relentless. I love it. I guess I miss that aspect of it, cause its so rare otherwise that anybody will push you, or let you push them forward, and move together into something bigger and more amazing than you would have done had you been toiling away in the dark by yourself.

Not to mention that it’s a million times harder to keep that kind of energy level in your work when you’re going it alone. Then again, I guess the place that I really learned to internalize all that motivation and pressure was in that class, so there you go. But still, it’d be nice to have some fellow travellers. I mean, I’ve got a few, but more is always welcome.