Wayne and Rebecca Madsen

Whew. I'm amazed at what we were able to fit into our lives this week given that Wayne had three midterms and I had a midterm and a project that took 30 hours of my time (on top of normal homework and other projects and research of course--I wrote an outline for my new thesis proposal so I'm starting to get somewhere there).  read more »

Last year, a professor led a discussion in one of my advanced studio classes about student "placement" rates. Most colleges try to collect data about post-graduation placement and alumni involvement with their degrees. In the visual arts program, it is a bit difficult to determine an actual "placement," since degrees don't lead to traditional jobs. Yet there is an even more disturbing track record for visual arts graduates than most other degrees. It turns out that after 5-10 years, only 5% of BFA graduates are still doing art.  read more »

Normal, normal. It was a pretty normal week. I got my big project done for my NLP class (the one I am also the TA for) late Monday night, which counts as 2 days late. Most people turned it in 2-3 days late. But we get 5 free late days to use as we wish, so it doesn't affect the grade for the project. I'm just glad I was able to finish. :)  read more »

I woke up this morning, having dreamt of cereal. I dreamt of Raisin Bran, Fruit Loops and Shredded Wheat. I'm telling you this because we don't own cereal. We have never owned cereal as a married couple (except the one time someone purchased us a box of shredded wheat while in Seattle). I wished that we had cereal this morning. On Monday morning, we discussed breakfast foods in my English writing class. As a culture, we have established rules for what passes as breakfast foods and what doesn't. You do not make or order a pizza for yourself in the morning, nor do you make a casserole.  read more »

This week was the New Zealand show from start to finish. The students from Te Whare Wananga o Awanuiarangi, an all Maori University in New Zealand, arrived late Sunday night. Monday they made the poor jet-lagged students and faculty wake up bright and early to help put up the show. They were so sleepy. And they kept commenting on how hot it was. Monday evening was a barbeque dinner, which I got to go to as well. It was funny to hear the Maori students keep talking about how everything in America is so big (from the mountains to the hamburgers).  read more »

On her way to her TA hours on Monday, a flyer posted on the wall of the Talmage building caught Rebecca's eye. It said "Want to play with robots?" Before even noticing that it payed $10 dollars for one hour's worth of play, she immediately knew that I would love to play with robots. We found the research group and signed up to play with the robot, and it was a blast. Their research group was putting together a paper on human-robot interaction for a conference (one of Rebecca's professors this semester is on the chair for the conference).  read more »

Well, Wayne jumped the gun and already posted some things about last week. Oh well, makes my job easier, right?  read more »

Back to school. The first week of school is always the slowest. Maybe it's because all the teachers are waiting for students to figure out their schedules. Maybe it's because we haven't figured out how to fill our time yet with school projects so all our time feels so empty. Maybe it's because most of our free time is spent doing errands, but this week was slow, despite how much we got done.  read more »

We made it safely to Utah, and with some good help Wednesday we got our stuff all moved in. Thursday we got halfway unpacked, and we finished up most of the rest of the unpacking lazily on Saturday. Unpacking and settling in has gone quicker and quicker each time we move. Maybe we should move more often and see if we can get it all done in one day. Hehehe. Or maybe we should just stay put for a year already. :)  read more »

Boy will we be glad to go back to Utah and have a consistent internet
connection at home! Until then, Wayne found his way to the downtown library, which has free internet but expensive parking. We looked up places with free internet and cheap parking, so he might be able to try those out this week when he needs to research installation project ideas. But he's also started another huge painting, so we'll see how much mischief he has time for.  read more »