Orientation Day

From preschool on, Orientation Day always seems to carry with it a particular light but present chaos. Everything is new again; all new faces, geography, architecture, infrastructure.  No one knows where to go or what time the next thing is happening or if we are standing in the right spot...and shouldn't someone have foreseen there would need to have been more pizza?...Great--now that I am trapped in this lecture hall I have to pee...one might think, "do I even deserve to be here?"

To orient oneself is to find yourself in relation to a fixed point, entity or idea. It implies something which occurs once. However, it truly is a continuos event.  What we call Orientation Day would be better called Orienteering, Day One.  For the entirety of our time here at California College of the Arts we will be finding our position in relation to several fixed and a few significant floating points.  The fixed points are the tasks assigned for completion.  They equal the points on a map a sailor must hit.  The floating points are the movement of the industry itself and the ever rising high-water mark of achievement set by our peers.  The latter are the storms with 60 foot waves, demanding your attention.  They will come.  I don't imagine there will be much warning when they do.

Perhaps this seems a hyperbolic claim to make; that navigating ones way through higher education in an effort to hit a desirable point within the industry of your choosing is somehow as difficult as navigating an ocean.  Surely I'd have my argument cut out for me if laying this idea in front of our design chair Leslie Roberts; who has in fact crossed some of the most challenging seas on our planet and I've discovered is still traveling half way around the globe to go ice climbing.  WTF Leslie.  WTF.  But I think the claim has merit.

Both are arduous tasks.

Today is the beginning of what will surely be an ongoing discovery of ourselves in relation to a new set of meta-geographies.

I have a very clear sense of the physical geography I inhabit. I know my planet, continent, state, city and neighborhood. I know where the college campus is. I know the layout of the buildings. I know where the restrooms are.  But if you were to ask me where I am relative to my peers, I really only have a vague notion.  If you were to ask me where I am relative to the industry I am intending to participate in, my sense is even further obscured.  If you were to ask if I could locate myself historically within that industry, I may be only slightly better informed.  So, in many ways I am lost...I am a foreigner.

Like all other moments in which I've been a foreigner, I am counting on mutual kindness and generosity to be my sextant and star.  If they don't show themselves, I may not know where I am but it will be clear, I'm off track and that will likely be all I'll need to know to survive.