1) Four years of accumulated art garbage- I mean work, will be the bane of your moving out experience.

Though most of my interests were focused on digital works by the end of my college career, I had dabbled extensively in sculpture (of which included metal, wood, and ceramic materials). The result was weird looks from strangers at the bus stop as I carried an infant-sized donkey, and Obama’s decapitated head back to my apartment – a few examples of a plethora of works I had to deal with after classes ended.

No donkey left behind.

I put cookies, not good ideas, into Obama's head.

Ultimately, I had about 250 pounds worth of inconveniently-sized pieces to handle as I scrambled to move out. I couldn’t throw them away – I’m not a mother, but I’m fairly sure I wouldn’t throw away my heavy children if I needed to relocate. However, given the time, I would have put them up for adoption or sold them… Don’t worry, this is just a bad analogy, I’ll be a great parent one day.

2) Take pictures of everything ever.

I mean of worthy works of art – not of a healthy stool that you’re proud of, no one wants to see that. I only mention the latter scenario because I was recently traumatized by a picture sent from a friend. Former friend. Just kidding – about the “former friend” part. I seriously was traumatized, though.

This is not the picture I was shown.

Instead of being a responsible art student, I left all of my documentation for the weeks after my graduation. This meant my art photo shoots were 80% dusting off, 15% gluing together/reassembling, 3% violent sneezing, and 2% of actual picture taking. That makes 100%, I’m clearly very good at math.

3) Don’t try to sell your art to other artists at the summer Ann Arbor art fair.

Based on empirical evidence, these folks seem to be more interested in selling their work than buying other art at a great price.

"But sir, why don't you want to buy my large metal torture contraption?"

I know, I should have become a personal fitness trainer.

Well, I hope that information was useful and not solely pitiful at my expense. A final nugget of advice would be to continuously polish up your online portfolio, especially through your final year. Most of the job-related contacts I’ve gotten have been through my website – a version of which is hosted on the school server:

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~oliviasu/portfolio/oliviasu.html

Happy senioritis!

However, if I could do it all over again, there are definitely a few things I’d change.

What I wish I had known before IP:

1) Do not take a full course load for both semesters as an IP student.

No, this is not vomit... Though the color scheme is puke-worthy. This was my schedule Fall 2009.

See the reddish brown? That means “overlap.” Unfortunately, U of M doesn’t readily give out Time-Turners, so I wasn’t able to pull a Hermione Granger and be in multiple places at once. However, I did happen to own several very realistic cardboard cut-outs of myself and therefore appeared not to play hooky compulsively.

Just kidding. I have my ways.

2) Your computer will be a senior citizen among other computers by senior year.

My laptop, once able to run Pandora, Photoshop, Illustrator, and OMGPOP (or iminlikewithyou, back then) simultaneously, couldn’t manage to open my most important Flash project when 2010 rolled around.

That said,

3) Get acquainted with computing sites on campus – if your project requires it.

If you had asked me what “GroundWorks” was any year prior to my senior year, I would’ve guessed that it was a landscaping company. However, in my 11th hour, the brilliant people at GroundWorks helped me finish my project in a few swift motions.

Along the same lines,

4) Spread out your belongings aggressively to reserve computers or secure better ones.

I’ve been that girl… The one that puts her jacket on top of a PC and walks around the Fishbowl until a Mac becomes available, and then quickly dumps the contents of her bag onto it to prevent anyone from claiming the computer before she returns from retrieving her jacket.

Whatever. That’s why I get a reflective computer screen and you don’t.

5) People who are not in art school will misinterpret you when you refer to IP as “IP.”

Self-explanatory.

And finally,

6) Uh, try to learn more things so that you can make a longer list when you look back at your IP experience.

Yea. I’m sure that if I had given special consideration to the aforementioned points, WebMD would not currently be the first thing that appears upon typing a “w” into my address bar.

Leave the internet-influenced diagnoses for the morning afters when you slowly, but not always surely, recall why you wouldn’t be surprised to have newfound liver problems.