I had the last class of my freshman year on Friday. It started out absolutely awful, but by the end of it, I was definitely on cloud nine.

It was my Fundamentals of Graphic Design class. For fifteen weeks, I’d been working as hard as I could in my quest to earn an A in Doris Harrison’s class. She was just about the nicest instructor anybody could ask for, but she told everybody from the start that she didn’t really give A’s unless all of the student’s work was truly remarkable, which happened “about two or maybe three times a year” between all of her classes. And remember, this is the largest private art school in North America, and she taught several classes both in-person and online. Furthermore, the head of the Graphic Design department, Mary Scott, was by now infamous for having been very, very displeased with the work done by the previous year, to say the least.

Anyway, she expected everybody to have a portfolio book (at least nine A3-sized pages long) as well as a process book with all our stuff. I’d been working on these in addition to the finals for my other classes for more than a week now and had only gotten one hour of sleep in the last 48 hours. Doris had made it clear that no books meant automatic failure, and I was not going to let that happen.

I’d wanted to get them printed no later than the night before, but unexpected complications with another final due that day in addition to complications with the books too made it so that I wasn’t done yet, and that was all on top of having to deal with some significant private things (one personal, one medical) that came up at the worst possible time (of course). So I worked through the night to make sure that I’d be able to print as early as possible in the morning. Not ideal especially since I was already so exhausted, but life rarely provides ideal circumstances, and I just had one more day!

The lady at the printshop gave me nothing but attitude about how I asked for same-day service. She was clearly having a bad day, yelling and groaning at coworkers and other clients over the phone. I needed her to do the job for me though, so I just smiled and waited nicely.

It was hard not to tell her how inappropriate she was being. It was even more tempting to explain all of the reasons for how things had come to require a same-day printing job. But I didn’t. It would have been both easy and satisfying to make her feel like a jerk for her assumptions, but it wasn’t her business and I just needed her to do her job.

But she wasn’t merely sassy and unprofessional. Oh no. She was outrageously incompetent too. Remember how I needed 9 A3 pages printed? I’d brought somewhere between 20 and 25 with me. First, she had to do the test page twice because she printed on the wrong side. A professional printer not knowing that some kinds of paper have a good side? Not a good sign, but I still had plenty more pages to compensate for any more problems, right?

She kept printing pages, and they kept being messed up. She’d mutter or turn around to patronize me with some kind of “See what happens?” as if her embarrassing performance would have been acceptable if it had been a day earlier. We had to use a particular type of A3 paper and it wasn’t cheap, so she was just blowing my money one page at a time. But honestly, I’d just be happy as soon as she got those 9 pages done.

She got 8 done.

In the most condescending tone possible, she told me there was a Staples a few blocks away that had my kind of paper. I smiled and hustled out the door, running all the way. They didn’t have the paper.

I caught a taxi (it was worth it to me to try to get this done as early as possible) and went to the closest Patrick’s paper supply store, but that particular one was small and didn’t carry it. Another taxi ride took me to the Utrecht near my school since I knew they had it, but they were out. I ran from there around the corner to the other Patrick’s, and the lady thought she had one left and pointed me to the right section. When it wasn’t there, she said she’d call another Patrick’s in the city to see if they had it, and while walking over to the phone, she stepped over the last elusive Epson Five-Star Matte A3 in the universe.

I caught another taxi back to the printer with the world’s most expensive sheet of paper in the world (I’d only needed one more sheet, but you have to buy the whole pack of 50, which is expensive enough without three taxi rides). Of course the lady that was printing my stuff wanted to finish doing something on a spreadsheet before printing the last page of that job, but whatever. Finally, it was done.

Now she just had to print my process book. It was more than 100 pages, but it was just a collection of 300 DPI images sized to fit on regular letter-sized paper. If I hadn’t needed it to be nice quality, I could’ve just done it on my own printer at home. Not hard. But of course, she had to do it twice because she was confused by me having them be 300 DPI. After she’d messed it up the first time and printed them all huge, she tried to tell me how I should’ve sized them before I gave them to her, which required me to explain to her that DPI has to do with resolution, not size. I had to explain it for her more than once in more than one way because she was just refusing to acknowledge it. Finally, as she started to do it again correctly this time, she still tried to tell me how “it wasn’t her job to make sure each page came out right.” Um, yeah, okay, whatever lady. Just print.

Finally, the printing was done and I didn’t have to deal with her anymore. Other people at the print shop helped get the heavy railboard covers I’d brought cropped to the size I wanted and then wire bound the books. Everybody else at the place was professional, courteous, and efficient. Unfortunately though, I was probably going to be late to my class now. At this point, I even got a text message from one of my classmates that said that Doris was worried and wondering where I was. I responded with as little as possible, just saying that I’d had a medical complication but that I was okay and on my way. They didn’t need to hear about the personal issue, nor did they need to hear about my frustrations with a sassy printer worker having a bad day.

When I get there, my classmates are outside because Doris and Mary Scott herself were examining everybody’s stuff. One of my classmates turned to me and said, “Don’t go in there now! They’re not happy!” I gulped, took a deep breath, said that the school had a medical file on me that could be consulted if necessary, and stepped inside.

Doris and Mary were at the front of the class talking to each other quietly when I slipped through the door. I looked like a wreck, I’m sure. I hadn’t slept in days, the last ten hours had just been miserable and unlucky, and I probably looked a little bit terrified since I’d just been told that the two of them weren’t happy and that’s not exactly what I wanted to walk into.

They turned toward me slowly. I gulped again. Doris raised her hand gesturing toward me and said in her slow voice to Mary, “This is the one we were talking about who you wanted to join the Graphic Design department.”

I was stunned where I stood as I processed the words. Had I heard that correctly? I blinked and said, “Excuse me? You mean me?” even though there was nobody else in the room. The two older ladies grinned and waved me over to them. Apparently, Doris had been nice enough to at least put out two posters I’d made the week before that the class had loved, and apparently, Mary had really loved my work too. She couldn’t believe that I wasn’t already a Graphic Design major. I don’t remember the exact words, but she said something along the lines of, “They’d be outstanding work for a Graphic Design major, so when I found out you weren’t, I decided that I’d have to convince you to switch your major.”

Doris and Mary spent the next couple of minutes talking to me in the empty room, with me pretty much on the verge of tears since I was so happy. When the rest of the class came in and found out about them trying to convince me to switch majors, they all turned toward me as one and excitedly began to shout over each other to also try to convince me to switch to their major. I felt loved and respected. It felt great.

At the end of the class, Doris asked to keep more than half of the things I put on display so that she could use them as examples in the future. After everybody else left, she smiled warmly and congratulated me on earning an A in her class.

You can see a lot of my work over on my new portfolio site, including the posters.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 21st, 2009 at 2:35 am and is filed under All Entries, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.