A Small Taste of

New York City Design School

            by Rebecca Lee

 

One by one people came into the classroom and sat down at computers.  I had been the first person there because I was afraid of being late to my first day of class.  The last person to walk in, a little late of course, was a middle-aged woman.  What is a woman her age doing in a pre-college summer class?  I wondered.  She made her way over to the last open seat with a superior type attitude.  This woman’s going to be trouble, I thought to myself.  After she took her seat the teachers began.  They introduced themselves as Amy and Dana.  Dana was going to teach the morning classes from the design perspective and Amy was going to teach the technology part of the class in the afternoon.  “Expect three hours of homework a night from each of us.  If you miss three half-days, you will be removed from the program and we will also be strict about tardies.”  This was going to be my summer? 

When I got back to the apartment that afternoon, I cried.  What had I been thinking flying all the way to New York to take an art class at Parsons School of Design?  It was not at all what I had expected.  When my grandmother asked me what was wrong I started from the very beginning of my story.

When I had been standing out waiting to go inside for registration I had seen a girl from elementary school who I had never really gotten along with.  When she told me that she was signed up for the Mixed Media Design class, I began to panic because I had thought that I had signed up for the same one.  For some reason though, I had been placed in another class called Design and Technology: Sound and Vision.  The course description made it seem like we were going to make a documentary of New York City.  This sounded exciting and I was sure that somebody was watching over me and that was why I had ended up in this class without the girl from school.

When the teachers finished talking about what the class was going to be like, they let us take a break.  In the elevator, everybody began to pull out cigarettes and lighters.  I walked from the door to the curb several times debating whether or not I should try to find somebody to talk to.  In the fifteen minutes we were outside, I counted the number of cigarettes some of the people smoked.  The girl in the blue dress, smoked one and a half, the overly tall kid smoked two and then the other girl’s half, and the girl in the tie-dyed shirt smoked a record three.  Smoking, I learned, was what all the cool art students did.  I was already out of place.

When we got back to the classroom Amy, the technology teacher, remembered that they had forgotten to let us introduce ourselves.  The girl in the blue dress introduced herself as Sammy from Los Angeles, the overly tall kid was Joe from “everywhere,” and the girl in the tie-dyed shirt was Allyson.  For most of the people in the class these short introductions were enough.  The middle-aged woman, however, gave a resume.  Her name was Irene, she had been born and raised in England, had recently moved to New York from LA, and had recently designed the packaging for a Mattel toy sold in F.A.O. Schwartz. 

After the introductions, we began to set up our blogs where we were supposed to post responses to articles every night and map out all of our projects in detail.  I was already uncomfortable with this because I hated writing things down, especially when my peers had access to what I wrote.  We were also told that we were going to be making websites to upload all of our projects onto and that we had to place links to all of our projects on our blogs.  It seemed useless to post links to all these projects on the blogs when they were so easily accessible on our websites but apparently it wasn’t.

In Dana’s class the next morning, we were given our first official assignment: Connection Progression: Find an instrumental piece of music and use Photoshop to make a series of black and white pictures (of your own or from other sources) to make a sequence to go with the music.  You will then add color on top of your sequence to make it connect more to the music.  The final sequence will be brought into Flash and synched with the music.  We were given until the following Monday (six days later) to learn how to use the two computer programs and put together our sequences.  As a musician and a photographer, the project sounded exciting to me despite the stress of the two programs.  That day during lunch, I walked by myself to Washington Square Park to eat my lunch without being surrounded by a constant cloud of cigarette smoke and took pictures of the surroundings to use for my sequence even though I hadn’t picked music yet.

In the technology lab that afternoon, we began making our websites using HTML coding, one of the most tedious processes ever invented.  I was familiar with some of the programming but making the website was frustrating nonetheless.  I went home that night a little more cheerful than I had been the day before.  The next day was July 4^th and there weren’t going to be classes.  It would be a nice break.

The next morning my grandparents and I drove out to Queens to go to a barbecue and a family friend’s house.  While we were stuck in traffic my grandmother asked, “Is there anybody nice there?  Any boys?”

“No,” I responded but she couldn’t hear me over the NPR that my grandfather had turned up to full volume in the car because he couldn’t hear it otherwise.  She yelled at him to turn it down and once he had she asked again.  My answer didn’t change.

“Maybe you’re just not giving them a fair chance.”

“They all smoke.  I hate smelling like smoke.”

My grandfather, who could hear all of the sudden, said, “you don’t have to smoke to be with them.”  He clearly didn’t understand that one did have to smoke to fit in with them.

On Thursday and Friday Dana wasn’t there because she was recovering from eye surgery.  This meant that Amy was there all day teaching us technology.  It was intense to say the least.  We were there from nine to noon and then from one to four doing nothing but computer programming.  It was torture.  I couldn’t wait for Dana to get back so we could do some design, which I much preferred.

 Taking pictures while walking various places in the area by myself was my lunchtime routine.  Smoking with everybody else in the class was completely out of the question.  On that Friday, in front of an apartment building on Fifth Avenue, two blocks north of Washington Square Park, I discovered my favorite sign in all of New York.  “Unnecessary Noise Prohibited,” it said.  It was funny that in a city that was so loud, sleepless, and overpopulated there was a place for such a sign.  This sign became the theme of my connection progression piece.

Over the weekend I began to put together pictures to go along with the musical piece I had selected, “Intermission” by Panic! At The Disco, and the picture of the sign.  A few of the people in the class had been planning to meet in the classroom on Saturday so I figured I’d go and see if anybody else showed up.  It would be a way to get to know the people and I was desperate for interaction.  I went.  Nobody else did.  I stayed until I finished my whole black and white sequence and returned home a little bit disappointed.

On Sunday after hours of getting tempted to throw my computer while trying to make a presentable website I announced that I didn’t need college art credit.  “Fuck it,” I screamed.  It was early in the afternoon and everybody was out so I made myself a glass of vodka with orange juice and went to sleep.  My grandparents returned around six from the lunch I had skipped because I had been trying to make a website.  They woke me to make sure I was alright and asked if I was hungry.  “No,” I lied, rolling over to face the other direction.  My grandmother knew me well enough to know that I was lying; she went and reheated some chili and brown rice.  My head hurt like hell, presumably from the vodka.  I got up to eat, thanked her for the chili, took a long shower, and went back to bed.

The next morning went well.  I woke up on time without needing to hit the snooze button, got dressed, ate breakfast (which was unusual), and left a little bit early.  I felt confident.  My hair was straight and my red shirt made my eyes look especially blue.  This day will be better, I thought to myself.  As I walked out of the apartment building, the red hand on the streetlight on the corner was replaced by the green walking man.  I was sure it was just for me.

“Goooooood morning,” the newspaperman said happily as I headed towards the subway entrance.

“Good morning.”  I replied.

“Have a wonderful day.” 

“You too.”  The same newspaperman had been there every morning for as long as I could remember.  I had always wondered what his name was but I was always too shy to ask.  He had an unusual friendliness about him; he was nice without being creepy, which I have always found to be rare.

Dana was gone again because of complications with her surgery.  That meant another day of stressful computer programming.  During one of the breaks Allyson asked me if I wanted to go outside with Joe and her for a minute.  I knew it was for a stress induced smoking break but I was desperate for the company.  They lit up as soon as we got outside.  “You want one?” Joe asked holding the pack towards me.  I took one and put it between my lips.  He passed me the lighter and I fumbled with it for a few seconds before lighting the cigarette.  My hands and my lips shook.  I took a short drag and blew it out almost immediately.  That was pathetic, I thought so I took a longer one and held it in until my mouth burned and my eyes began to water.

“You don’t inhale?” Allyson asked as I blew it out.  I took another long drag and inhaled it.  It burned my throat and my nose and I began to cough.  My body was shaking and I couldn’t tell if my eyes were watering or if I was actually crying.  After I had caught my breath I did it again, trying to ignore the pain.  I was never going to fit in if I didn’t.  This time I coughed so hard that I vomited my whole breakfast onto the sidewalk on West Thirteenth Street between Fifth and Sixth.

“You’ve never smoked before, have you?” Joe asked.

“No,” I admitted shyly.  My face burned from the humiliation and from all the coughing.  Cigarettes, I decided, were not something I ever wanted to try again.

Allyson and Joe rarely ceased to make fun of me but I didn’t mind.  It was playful teasing and I liked having people to talk to.  During smoking breaks I would stand there while they would offer me cigarettes and then ask why I didn’t smoke.  I made up many excuses such as, “I couldn’t afford it.”  This was true but it wasn’t really the reason.  My previous experience had left me wanting more.

With each project, Dana became more and more the devil.  She was an expert at criticizing everybody else’s ideas if they weren’t exactly like hers.  I learned this after she graded my connection progression piece down for being “too blocky,” even though that was what I had been going for since the music was “blocky,” and made me rerecord two hours worth of sound footage after I had already returned the equipment because my idea hadn’t been “going anywhere.”  She did, of course, count the rerecording as late because I hadn’t gotten it right the first time.  She was a bitch.  There was no nicer or less obscene way to say it.

Amy, on the other hand, turned out to be all right.  While the technology classes were not so fun, she was amusing and she always had some sort of story to tell about her drugged out teenage years to make the time go by a little faster.  Irene, however, did not agree.  She hated Amy because she wasn’t helpful enough.  The real problem was that computers were not from Irene’s generation.  She had absolutely no idea what she was doing.

Her anger and frustration reached its peak sometime during the second week.  Dana had just gotten back from surgery and was teaching her class again.  Instead of telling Dana that she was happy she was back, she began to yell at her for Amy’s horrible teaching style.  We were all outside of the room using the paper cutter while she was inside complaining.  It was convenient for us that the classroom had no door.  It wasn’t quite as convenient for her.  She made a fool of herself with all her venting.  The rest of us stood around whispering about what she was saying.  In some ways, Irene might have shown the frustration with the technology that we all felt, we were just better at keeping it up inside.

In the middle of the third week, Allyson was rushed home.  They said she was ill.  She had been hallucinating, what she “saw” was unknown.  “She was probably just on drugs,” my mother said when I told her the story.  I was tempted to agree but people who had been with her the whole night had told me otherwise.

During design class on Thursday, my phone beeped, interrupting Dana’s criticism of the girl sitting whose work was displayed on the overhead.  I looked down.  The message was from Allyson.  “AIDS or mono,” it said.

“You?” I replied.

“Maybe.”

“Put that away,” Dana howled from across the room.  I did.  I would worry later.

Later came sooner than I had expected.  Joe had gotten the same message and he told Amy that afternoon.  Everybody was talking about it.  Rumors spread like fires.

“She was sexually active?” Irene asked.

“I heard she used to do heroine.” Sammy whispered.

All I could do was wait, wondering what would become of my newest friend.

On Friday, we left the dreadful classroom for the first time in the three weeks.  On the subway out to Queens to go to the Museum of the Moving Image, I was sandwiched between Joe and a scary-looking clown.  I sat there terrified—I had always been afraid of clowns.  Joe laughed.  I didn’t blame him.  It was probably funny for him to watch me trying not to cry over something so ridiculous.

Allyson returned the following Tuesday.  “They don’t know what’s actually wrong with me.”

“Is that good news or bad news?” I asked.

“Dunno.  I’m here though.”  This was true.  She was somehow better.

“Allyson.  You can’t come back until you’ve spoken to the director,” Dana said as she glared at us for talking.  “Go on now.”

“Watch my stuff,” Allyson said to me, pointing at her orange suitcase.  I nodded as she left.

She came back during one of the breaks.  “What happened?” Joe asked as he lit his cigarette and passed her the pack.

She lit her own.  “They told me I can stay and fail or leave and fail.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“Dunno.”  That seemed to be all anybody could get out of her.

  After the short smoking break, we returned back to the classroom where Dana introduced our final project—to make a video that showed a certain unknown aspect of the city.

“I think I’ll stay and make the movie with you,” Allyson told me as we walked to go find a place to get lunch.

I was relieved and had so much I wanted to say but somehow all I could get out was a simple “Thank you.”

“The good thing about failing anyways is that I don’t have to do the projects I don’t want to.”

“I guess.”

That afternoon we went and got Chinese take out and I followed her back to her dorm room to think of something to give Dana so she would get off our backs—our video proposals were a day overdue.  As she was unlocking the door, the girl from middle school appeared, gave me a dirty look, and disappeared into her room.

“You know her?” Allyson asked as we stepped into the room.

“I used to.”  She didn’t ask about it to my relief.

That night we wrote our story and convinced her boyfriend to come in from Jersey to be in it the next day.

“Why don’t you have footage yet?”  Dana asked the next morning.

“We’re working on it.” Allyson said, rolling her eyes.

“I don’t think you guys can make a good video in three days.”

“We can do lots of things.”

“That’s not the point.”  She gave up and huffed away. 

I rolled my eyes at Allyson.  “I guess we could start by editing some of the music,” I suggested.

“Yeah.  It’ll get us out of this room.”

During filming at Coney Island that afternoon the little red “low battery” symbol flashed in the upper right corner of the screen.

“Shit,” Allyson whispered, “now we’re fucking screwed.”

“No we’re not.  Just walk off into the sunset with Greg.  We’ll make it love at first sight or something.”  She did it in just enough time—the battery died as they were approaching the boardwalk. 

The next day, Dana informed us that our movie had no real point.  We didn’t really care.  We made it anyway, finishing early.  People seemed to like it the next day when it was shown on a big screen for everybody in the class.  Dana had been proven wrong.

That was it.  The four weeks had ended.  The class was over.  It didn’t seem real to me no matter how many times I repeated it to myself.  In four short weeks I had learned how to use five computer programs, without having had previous knowledge of any of them.  The sense of accomplishment overpowered the difficult tediousness of the class.  It felt good to be finished.

I returned home the following Monday, not quite ready to leave New York but very ready to have my family and friends back.  I had new stories to tell and audiences composed of the people I loved to listen to them.

Allyson never told me what the doctors said was wrong with her.  She might not have even found out herself.  For her it was probably better that way.  Having some kind of disease would have given her more to worry about.  Similarly, I never found out what grade I got in the end of the class.  Maybe it was also better that way.  A low grade would have ruined my sense of accomplishment.