Being an Almost Graduate

I've been checking around the AM alumni site and looking at my classmate's demo reels and I've realized something. AM produces some seriously nice animators. I've seen a lot of really good work and its hard to believe most of the students were animating for the first time. I've watched my classmates grow and now get jobs/internships at Disney, Dreamworks, Blue Sky, Pixar, ILM, and Rhythm&Hues. I'm really glad to be a part of the AM community and to have had the chance to learn from some of the top animators from various studios. I wish the program was longer, as I still have so much to learn. I've watched people in my class grow from having never animated in their life to working at Disney and such, while I am still sitting here at home collecting rejection letters.

All I can do is tell myself these letters are a good thing since my parents want me to finish my time at SCAD. I don't think I'd feel bad if I got hired before I finished up there. Isn't the whole point in going to college is to learn and develop your skills so you can get a job? I'm going to a couple of events at Siggraph since my graduation from AM is being held there. I've never been there before but I've heard about how great it is. All I wanted to do was go to the animation theater and the job fair. Now I'm debating whether I should bother bringing my reel, since I still have five more quarters to take a SCAD. I'm still working on my short and am working on adding a few shots from it to my reel. We'll see if I'm fast enough to accomplish that by the end of the month.

I would really like to get an internship more so than a job right now because of the SCAD dilemma. That way I can get experience from a bunch of studios and continue to move towards finally being finished so I can apply for jobs for real. I think I should have taken summer classes to push my graduation date closer to the original time. I didn't find out about my acceptance and then rejection from R&H soon enough to apply for summer classes though. This time I'll try calling HR at all the studios I send a reel to when it gets close to registration time. Hopefully then I'll be able to find out whether or not I got in and then register for summer classes based on their answer.

Anyway, watching all of my peers get jobs where I hope to someday work makes me feel like a little kid trying to hang out with the big kids. AM gives us all this information about resumes, reels, interviews, contact info/connection with various studios and says "Now take this information and go get a job! =D". All of the AM grads shout "Yeah!!!!!" and they rush out to get hired at all these cool studios. I see myself trying to run out with them when a teacher grabs me by the shirt and says "Not so fast young lady! You've got to finish your schooling!". The teacher plops me down at a desk in an empty classroom and I sit there like -______- and =(. Then my classmates start streaming in excitedly telling the teacher where they've gotten a job. I get excited each time one of my classmates comes in with news of working at *insert dream studio here*, but a stern look from the omnipresent teacher forces me to sit back down at my desk.

Lol, maybe I could animate a scene like that. I have a really clear vision of how that would look in my head right now and I think it would be rather amusing. The only bad thing is the number of characters I'd have to use and the fact that I have to finish my short first, lol.