Tuesday, the 20th of January, 2009. A memorable day, not the least because it was the day that Barack Obama was sworn in as President of the United States, and Bush could finally vacate the White House and proceed to figure out how to live in a nation that almost universally detested him. The upside, however, is that he's probably living in the one country that likes him the most out of all the countries in the world.
Anyway, it is clearly a historic day, the first (half) black President being sworn in after a ground-breaking campaign. It seems it will be a day to cherish and remember for all American history, with a President who might end up being remembered as among the greatest, in the company of Lincoln, Washington, and FDR. It was an inauguration that you couldn't let just slide past unexperienced and unseen. Unfortunately, it was also the first day of classes at NYU.
I pondered going to class. I've experienced some of the righteous jealousy of teachers in the past, when students let other, non-academic events take precedence (or, even other academic classes) over their class. The teachers would often, in great annoyance, state how utterly important this class was for the future success of their students, and a failure to give it the respect (and attendance) it deserves put your education and well-being at risk. They then would huff indignantly and return to their planned lecture for the day. For some reason or another, I mostly remember this being done by English teachers of mine.
So, I have a great deal of respect for my teachers, and I do not easily decide not to go to classes (especially considering how much my family is paying for them). However, inauguration day puts that dedication to the test. Should I stay in my room to watch this historic figure become President? A man that seems to have the ability and the leadership to steer our country into even greater glory and responsibility? A man that I personally rooted for and voted for?
I checked what class I had first. Life Drawing: Anatomy. A class that doesn't exactly sound like it has the most intellectual and academic gravitas to it. Taking into consideration the liberal nature of NYU and the level of Obama support I've seen around on campus, I decide that my teacher might be nice and understanding enough to forgive me for missing class for the inauguration.
I stay in my dorm, and have a good time watching and listening to President Obama's inauguration, though I get a nervous pang in my stomach as I watch the clock get ever closer to when my class starts, but I ignore it and continue watching, enjoying it all the while.
Finally, it finishes, and I check the clock. It's fifteen minutes past the time my class started. I check how long the class is supposed to go on for, and it's about a three hour class. I then begin to think about whether I should go now and show up considerably late for class (as the travel time to get to class would tack on about another 20 minutes or so), or just skip it altogether. For some reason, showing up late to a class seems so much worse to me than just missing it entirely. Despite my nervousness about showing up late, however, I decide to go, since I would still be there for the majority of the class time. Whatever the disapproval I got, I figured it would be better of me to have to face my teacher for the first time being late rather than having missed the first class altogether.
I grab my stuff and hop on the bus that will take me to main campus. While I wait for the bus to start to move, I briefly consider some excuses for why I'm showing up late, but I quickly drop the line of thought to settle into some nice reading (Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time). After some fifteen minutes or so, I'm on campus and rushing to my class room.
When I get to the room, however, the door is locked. I push on it a little bit, making the door make a bit of a loud "thunk", but no one comes to open it. I try to look through the windows to see if anyone is inside, but the windows are those purposely distorted kind that makes it impossible to tell what's past them. I start to think "Was class canceled because of the inauguration? Did I come all the way up here for no reason?". Since the class was in the animation area, the floor had a front desk where staff sat to check out people into the computer labs on the floor and to give them technical assistance. They also had the keys for all the rooms.
I walk up to the desk and ask "By any chance, do you know if the Life Drawing class is canceled?". A man behind the desk looks up at me and shakes his head.
"No, I'm pretty sure it's on-going."
I explain to him how I tried to open the door, how it was locked, and it seemed there was no one inside to open it. The man sighs slightly and stands up, grabbing a chain of keys.
"They must've locked it because of the model," he tells me as he leads me to the door and begins to unlock it.
I'm puzzled. "Model?" I ask as he opens the door.
Let me just say, when I read the description of the class, I thought we'd be doing some studies of animals, skeletal structures, hands, etc. I had seen fellow students of mine in, what I thought, was the Life Drawing: Anatomy class, and they had been drawing skeletons and animals in various poses, so my expectation of the class was not without justification. However, it seems that I had it completely wrong. I must have been seeing students working for a different drawing class or something.
The door swings open to reveal that, indeed, the class was in session, and that probably all the other students in the class was already there, arranged in a semi-circle, each sitting at a drawing desk. A woman in gray hair sits in the corner, who, I assume, must be the professor. They all stop and look up at me, as it seems I have interrupted them in the middle of drawing something. I stand there, in the door way, realizing that I'm the only one, or the last one, to show up late to the class, something I wasn't quite counting on. I had expected other students to have done what I had did, but it does not seem to have been the case. I start to have that familiar sinking feeling in my chest as I turn to see what they could possibly be drawing. A stark naked girl standing in an elegant pose stares back at me.
Needless to say, I'm completely astonished. I feel all the color drain from my face. I quickly avert my gaze and turn to look back at the teacher, who seems to be either watching me in bemusement or disapproval. I hesitantly make my way to her, knowing not what else to do. I approach her and begin to mumble, trying to explain myself but failing as my brain apparently stopped functioning properly.
"I...I'm sorry for, uh, being so, uh..."
She lets out a small chuckle at my consternation.
"No worries," she says in a kindly voice, "today is a very important and exciting day. Now, just fill out your information here and find a desk to sit at. You can ask one of the other students what we're doing."
She gives me a piece of paper that has the various names and contact information of all the other students, which I fill out. I then numbly look up and try to spot an empty desk. There isn't one. I have to drag one out. So, I go, and as quietly as possible, pick up a desk and place it at one end of the semi-circle of desks, all the while trying to avoid looking at the nude girl posing at the front of the class. I sit down, and bend over to the kid next to me.
"What are we doing?" I whisper.
The kid hands me a blank piece of paper and a crayola marker.
"We're drawing her as fast as we can with one color marker, and then we stop and use a different colored marker when she changes poses."
I look down at his paper, which already has several different iterations of drawings on it. They've been at this for a little while. I pick up the marker, and finally look back up at the model, who is facing away from me. I then try to toss aside my embarrassment and attempt to begin drawing her as quick as I could. By far, this was one of the most awkward and embarrassing ways I've ever entered a class, and it was the first class of the semester. A most excellent start.
After about thirty minutes of (attempting at) drawing the model, the teacher stops us, and tells the model to get dressed. She then tells us why she gave us such huge markers (to make it impossible to draw intricate details), and how we could use any medium we would like to draw the subject (a.k.a. the model). She then tells us some information, some of the materials we need to get, and then releases us early. I had only been there for about forty minutes.
As everyone gets up and leaves, some smiling bemusedly at me as they walked past, I got up and went to the teacher once again to try and apologize, and also find out if I had missed any other information.
"I'm sorry I showed up so late. I had been watching the inauguration..." I begin, at which she laughs.
"No, no, don't worry about it. We were all late for class as well, and we even tried to watch the rest of it here." She motioned at a computer monitor that had CNN's website displayed.
"Really?" I asked, feeling more relieved.
"Yes," she chuckles, "You know, if I had come in and any of my students had actually shown up on time for this class, I would've failed them!"
I laughed.
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