Yep, I'm officially no longer a student at AiA. Blue collar slob now. No more artsy bullshit.

Actually, it's more of "no more quashing my artsy bullshit". See, I joined up for all the wrong reasons, and only enjoyed myself because I was allowed to be creative. All I've ever wanted to do was make music, and sure enough I was allowed to - the problem was, that wasn't the focus of the program. I was taught wrong, or rather, not taught right: Being that it was an audio engineering course, we're not supposed to make music, just record it. Blah. That's only a small dumb bit anyway, and it takes too long to explain.

Lemme just shrink it all down: I went to college for all the wrong reasons - I thought I had to, I thought all degree-less jobs are miserable wal-mart/janitorial positions, I thought I'd be a loser, I thought my family wanted me to, etc... And I joined this particular program for all the wrong reasons, too: I basically had no confidence in my music, and even less in any other ability of mine, so I figured I'd settle for second best and record other people's instead - big mistake.

What I should have done was just practice my ass off so I could get into a music school and study music theory. What stopped me was the fear of 'failure', that is, the "starving artist" problem; and no, I wasn't going to try and do commercial music for a living. I just figured I'd break into the game industry or do jingles or something.

Bleh. The school is also a badly run, harsh, expensive beurocratic nightmare. I essentially have two teachers that give a damn, and only one of those has anything to do with the main program, the other being the one hired to teach the single token music class. The rest were clueless, uncaring, or both. Combine this with my independant style and I do ALL of my projects alone, on my own equipment, schedule, ect, and guess what?

None of them count unless their done entirely (or mostly at least) on school property. I can't graduate unless I re-do all but about 2. I wish I found that out three years ago...

Anyway, there's a fuckload more, mostly about my own mental issues I'd rather not discuss. In the end, though, I'm relieved. Sure, I'm a dropout, with all that bad stigma associated with it, but truth be told I really, really like my job. I'm not gonna say where I work, but it's almost enough to be featured on disco channel's Dirty Jobs.

After experiencing both, I know I'd be happier sitting behind the counter at a record store, adult bookstore, hippy dippy grocery, or what have you than fiddling with microphones that aren't aimed at my own stuff.

I can handle Wal-Mart too if needbe. Besides, they don't destroy records at my school. If I want to go back I have more than half a program already done.

Oh, and in case someone actually reads all this and wants to admonish me or encourage me to go back, let's just say you'd run the risk of falling into the "fuckload more" catagory.

Time to go drown my sorrows in leftover mexican food.

Ciao.