The past few weeks have been hectic. I had my final week of classes for the semester at SMFA, which required that I have three different final animation projects completed. I somehow survived and produced completed projects that I am very proud of, but I honestly haven't had the time to breathe or blog. Things calmed down for a bit, and I had my Review Board, my big end of the semester critique, at SMFA, meaning that all I have left are Tufts finals. Which is still pretty daunting. Having the motivation to push through these last few weeks has been a struggle, and all I have left is a paper due Monday and an exam, also on Monday. So of course I'm blogging. (Having two things on the same day is the worst because I don't have the self discipline to get going early enough to approach and attack both in an organized manner. They're both at noon too. It's horrible. I have no idea which one to work on first. So I've settled for neither. What are good study habits?)
I've been sort of struggling to get work done as I deal with the fact that my seniors are leaving me, and every chance I get to see them, I take, so that I can spend as much time with them as possible while they are still at Tufts. They're the coolest, and they are all going to do such incredible things after Tufts, but my Tufts experience would not have been the same without the seniors I have met here who have introduced me to this school and to, among other things, the Quidditch team, one of the most important facets of my Tufts social life. Add to that the fact that it's very difficult to get motivated after an insanely stressful week, and I'm sort of in this floating state of no productivity. (After I post this, it's time to get moving on that paper. Yay Shakespeare!)
Something I did this weekend, despite my workload, is help put together QuidEx. It started out as a sort of joke because I wanted the opportunity to see the thesis presentations of the seniors, but it turned into something that I'm actually pretty proud of. This was more or less a TED talk by Tufts Quidditch players for the rest of the team. It was completely optional, but it was just a cool way for us to all see what we were working on off the pitch. Despite the fact that it was optional, 7 members of the team, not all seniors, presented what they had been working on this year and semester. Bonus, I learned things! We know each other as athletes, or in my case, as a manager. But the fun thing about Tufts is that everybody is so involved in so many different things and so invested in very cool areas of study. Tonight I had the opportunity to see some very intelligent peple present on what they are passionate about, including theater (Shakespeare madlibs!), heat sinks, the preservation of Internet art, teaching science, technology, and engineering in pre-school television, effective altruism, and urban planning. I am constantly impressed by my friends, and today was no different. It speaks volumes about their dedication that each of them had some sort of senior project, or capstone project, or thesis that they had devoted their time to.
I also presented, showing two finished projects, one which I have posted online before in an unfinished state, and another that I have devoted the past few weeks to. These two films are two of my favorites from this semester, and I hope you enjoy them as well! Fresh from their QuidEx world premiere, I am incredibly proud to present Puppy Love and FrogBoy.
Puppy Love from Jehan Madhani on Vimeo.
FrogBoy from Jehan Madhani on Vimeo.