I just spent the last 10 minutes working on my homework for my digital arts class and then suddenly pointed my wrist at the sheet of paper and exclaimed, “Ugh, I can’t handle this right now.’ Lesson learned: Taking on a new position at work and a new extracurricular activity simultaneously results in something I like to call SCREWED!

My class isn’t exactly what I thought it would be. We don’t even look at Photoshop and Illustrator until the 11th week. It’s a fundamentals course and it’s very conceptual. Our instructor says he wants us to be art directors and not production designers (the feeder fish of the design world, I suppose). Before I can become a designer, I need to first learn to think like one.

OK, OK — I get it. But really, when can I become Dooce? I’m getting a little bored with this website’s masthead, but there’s nothing I can do to change it. I want to know how to do stuff. Now.

When it comes to bettering myself creatively, I’m very impatient. On my first day of my first newspaper internship, I remember asking my editor, “So when can I become a features reporter?” (At larger newspapers, someone usually has to die for there to be an opening on the features desk.) My editor was a wise old man and said something like, “Somebody once asked Picasso how he became an artist. He said, ‘I learned to draw.’ You [young grasshopper,] learn to write.”

OK, OK — I get it. As for my class, I know my instructor is extremely competent and has inspired many students to become designers after finishing his course. I’m just proud of myself for taking the first step.

Back to my homework. How do all you grad school people do it?