It was Monday, October 28. Recently woken from a power nap, I scurried over to the University Towers to attend the Meet & Make event, an art and therapy session that I had seen a poster of for the week before. I have no artistic skills in my arsenal to speak of; rather, I went because I was hoping to learn something.
I made my way to the basement, where the Activity Center was located, to find two individuals meticulously arranging brightly colored long-stemmed flowers into vases, alongside driftwood and various assorted fruits. Tables were placed in a circle around the display, with paper taped onto the surface. Pencils, erases, and markers had been placed on the tables for each participant.
The two individuals were Cynthia and Jonathan Stephan, the organizers of the event. They welcomed me warmly, and I learned that Cynthia was both a therapist and an artist, while Jonathan was the social worker at University Towers. The Meet & Make sessions were their brainchild, in an effort to provide a safe, socially-distant way of both socializing and relaxing. Cynthia spoke about how their goal was to provide a low-stress environment for the students to wind down and create, alleviating the stresses of the week.
Although attendance for that session was noticeably dismal, the couple was no less enthusiastic with their limited class. Cynthia introduced us to a sketching technique called “blind contouring,” a method which I was unfamiliar with. It involved sketching the object as you swept your gaze across its surface; however, there was a catch—you could not look down on your paper.
This revelation slightly perturbed me, as an incessant obsessive for most minor tasks. Nonetheless, I dutifully followed Cynthia’s instructions and focused my gaze ahead on the silhouette of two flowers delicately crossing stems, battling the urge to keep looking down at my paper to see the undoubtedly horrific reproduction.
However, the combination of the soft music playing in the background and the relaxed demeanor of the instructors was calming, and I began to stop worrying about how the sketch was going to turn out. It was certainly nice to be able to concentrate on making, instead of focalizing on the end product. The process itself became enjoyable.
At the end of the session, I realized that learning blind contouring was oddly a strange parallel to university life. We, as students, get so caught up on the end goal of getting a degree, finding a job, or applying to graduate schools, that the process of being in school becomes a tedious chore. Recently, I had been so busy from academics, work, and extra-curriculars, that I was viewing college as an exhausting process that had to be finished as quickly as possible to get to the finished product.
However, college should not just be a painful ordeal to get to the next thing. There are little things to cherish within the process, like your roommate cracking a corny joke at 2 a.m. while you are both hunched over your laptops furiously typing, or when you watch a ridiculous, cheesy old T.V. show with your friends while eating takeout because you can’t find a show you all agree on. There is even something lovely about that little ten-minute nap that you take before your next appointment. Learning how to contour blindly taught me that sometimes, you have to enjoy each moment before you complete the piece.
The Stephans will be holding the Meet & Make sessions every week, Monday, 7-8 p.m. at the University Towers Activity Center until November 30. I highly encourage any student who is in need of an hour in a stress-free, relaxing environment to attend, and to simply enjoy the process.
The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of Andrews University. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, Andrews University or the Seventh-day Adventist church.