You recently may have had a long conversation with me about art, life, and growing up. I have been using my friends and family as a sounding board. I was having a small life crisis. Not that my life was small, but that the crisis was small. I sent out 9 grad school applications. I threw the bones into the air hoping that the fates would smile on me. But I kept getting rejection letters. After the 8th rejection I started looking at alternative routes. Architecture seemed interesting, I thought. Oh by the way, Ohio University sent me two rejection letters. Maybe because of my low GPA they thought I couldn't read. Okay, I get it! You are glad I applied but you can not accept me. I get it, geez. I didn't want to be a Bobcat anyway. What a wimpy mascot... Now the Ram, now that is a regal animal. That is an animal that can represent me on a shirt or at a sporting event. The Virginia Commonwealth University Ram Bucks offered me a place in their ceramics graduate school. After much prayer and fasting and thinking. Andrea and I feel strongly that we are to take our family to Richmond Virginia to go to graduate school. This is an exciting and a scary time for us. We have the most anxiety about finding Andrea a good teaching job.
VCU is a really good school.
Here is some information about VCU:
Grants and Awards 3 MacArthur Genius Awards ($500,000 each) in the last 5 years!
$75K Tremaine Foundation Grant
American Academy of Arts and Letters Awards (3)
3rd Simultaneous $120,000 US Dept. of Education Jacob Javits Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships (3)
Pollock-Krasner Awards (4)
Windgate Fellowships (2)
International Sculpture Center Outstanding Student Achievement Award
National Rankings Sculpture, #1 overall
Graphic Design, #4 overall (#1 among public university programs)
Painting, #8 overall (#3 among public university programs)
Fiber Arts #4 overall (Dept. of Craft/Material Studies) (#1 among public university programs)
Glass #5 overall (Craft/Material Studies) (#1 among public university programs)
Multimedia/Visual Communications #9 overall (likely a combination of our departments of Communication Arts, Graphic Design, Photography and Film, and Kinetic Imaging) (#3 public university ranking)
Ceramics #12 overall (Craft/Material Studies) (#6 among public university programs)
