Opportunities aren't given.
They're made.
As that being one of the slogans to Temple University's new marketing campaign, 'Temple Made'.
I thought it would be a good title to this post, since I've had a lot of opportunities made these past few days.
You may remember last semester, when I told you about the Temple Made commercial I was in... well, I found it! You can barely see me, but I made it! Here's the link, and if you pause it at 1 minute exactly, I am standing directly underneath the 'N' in 'driven'. But enjoy the rest of the commercial, Temple truly is taking over Philadelphia, and offering so much to us as a student body. Hope you enjoy it!
After my debut in this commercial, another few opportunity was given to me.
Every year, the Honors Program creates a little book called: Smart Stories. Its a book about honors students, and the cool, interesting, amazing things that they've done.
So, being who I am, I send one in about HootaThon. Mine was chosen, and will be listed in the book.
Because of this smart story, I was selected with 30 other student to have an opportunity to have a video vignette placed on the University, Admission, and Honors website. Theses videos would be directed towards interested students on why they should choose Temple University. Out of the 30 of us, only 8-10 were to be chosen.
Yesterday, I had a group interview with the Director of the Honors Program, Director of Admissions, and another woman who I think is in charge of publicity (not positive on that one though). Anyways, Temple is currently working on two projects. One, for these vignettes of 8-10 students for the website, and Two, a group of six sophomores video vignettes to be sent to all Presidential and Provost Scholarship recipients and why they should choose Temple University.
According to Amanda Neuber, my Honors and HootaThon advisor, these woman loved my story (about transitioning to college from New York, and HootaThon) so much, that they are placing me with the group of six sophomores. They had wanted only sophomores because they've been on campus for a year and a half, but can still relate to high school seniors. But Gaelen and HootaThon will be added to that list! We'll be filming these soon, and as soon as I get a copy/link to the videos, you will too!
THEN, as a current volunteer member of HATT (the Honors Admission and Transition Team; helping interested high school seniors with any questions about the Honors Program and Temple itself), we help to host Experience Temple Days (ETD). A day where accepted students can see what life is like at Temple University. At ETD, during the Honors Program session, the MC's call into the audience to have current honors students talk about something cool they've done on campus. And yes, Gaelen and HootaThon were chosen for that as well!
WOW.. I think that's almost everything about opportunities I've made here at Temple.
This past weekend, I had my interviews for the RA Job Position. They went really well, and I find out in about a month on the status of that job.
as you can see, I was happy with how the interview went.
(ps.. thanks for the bow tie Liam! and mom, everyone knew who I was because of your scarf)
NOW, we are currently in our second week of classes for the Spring Semester. I am taking six classes, Foundation Drawing, Foundation 2-Dimensional Design, Foundation 3-Dimensional: Wood shop, Investigations of Art & Design, Honors Art History of the Western World II, and Honors Mosaics I (a Gen-Ed course that is primarily literature).
I have really enjoyed most of my professors so far. I love my 2D Design professor a lot. I feel that he is going to teach me so much about the art world, and how to properly design art. 3D is fun as always, we are currently working on cardboard pieces. In drawing, we just finished our first mini-project, of doing 30 drawings of one object. I chose a piece of my slip casting project that broke off last semester. I then decided to draw all of these on newspaper or newsprint. I decided to do this, based off of Robert Rauschenbergs quote, "The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history." I believe that artists should capture moments in time that some people may not even know about in 50 years.
I used crayons, colored pencils, markers, tape, charcoal, pen, and pencil to create these pieces.
It may be hard to see them, but i'll try to get a better image soon!
I tried to create a statement with some of them (but you kinda need to read the newspaper to get it)
I came up with another idea of a project or series from this on only using 'kid' art supplies. My friend Shay said in the critique, "If you know Gaelen, it's very him. Not saying this in a bad way, but its very kid related because of the materials used, but thats very much of who Gaelen is. He loves kids, and eventually wants to do that with his career. But I love the fact that you used Crayola crayons and markers, art supplies that kids would use, and made it into fine art."
I thought that was really interesting, and I really wanted to expand on that in another series.
I think thats just about everything thats going on with me. HootaThon as I mentioned earlier is beginning to be spread around campus, and known to students who are deciding on Temple.
I have some exciting new about us (HootaThon), but i'll share that with you another time.
Hope you enjoyed this post, i'm so glad and excited to be back at Temple, and i'll talk to you all soon!
