Advice to Incoming RISD Freshmen
The school year’s coming up, and as a recent RISD grad (‘19), I wanted to send out some advice to up-and-coming students! I’ve divided my points into three categories: General, monetary, and mental health-related.
Please note that this article includes expletives for emphasis and comedic effect.
GENERAL
Raingear
Invest in a good umbrella. For my first two years at RISD my family was making around $16,000 a year, so I skimped on everything. This was a mistake where umbrellas were concerned. I plowed through a slew of mini umbrellas before I had to cave and buy a big, sturdy one. People always told me, “Oh, Providence isn’t usually this rainy!” Don’t believe the lies. It IS that rainy, from late October to mid-May, and the winds can get WILD. Since the RISD studios are pretty spread apart, you’ll want to buy a waterproof portfolio to cover your work and an umbrella that can keep the rest of you dry (and not crumple at the slightest provocation).
Also, note that some of the freshman dorms still don’t have air conditioning, and heat waves tend to strike around freshman orientation time. You won’t want to be trapped in your cement box dorm room without a fan.
Damage fees
Take photos of your living space. This goes double for if you choose to live off campus in the future. Take photos of your room (chiefly of any broken furniture, chipped paint or other abnormalities) and upload them somewhere online (or email them to yourself) so a future RISD staff person would be able to tell when they were taken. This way no one can falsely claim you broke something and charge you a fee at the end of the year. When I left my off campus apartment the landlady decided to charge my housemates and I for the removal of all the furniture that had already been there when we arrived — tables, chairs, couches, shelves, lamps. I could’ve avoided that huge fee had I taken photos of the space, and had proof that the furniture belonged to the former tenants.
Switching classes
Yes, you can switch foundation classes. This may only work for people who are registered with a disability or a mental disorder, but neurotypicals shouldn’t be afraid to give this one a try as well. In any case — there are some notoriously difficult foundation teachers at RISD. I found out that I was assigned to one such class for my second semester, and I raced over to the Carr Haus offices for help. My plea boiled down to, “Get me the hell out of this; I can’t handle another tough class!” And RISD did! I was able to move to another section with a less difficult drawing teacher. It saved my hide.
This school is built on a hill
Do rolling backpacks look silly? Kinda’. Did one save my back a thousand times over when I needed to truck all my art supplies back and forth up a giant hill? Hell yeah. Just…consider it. I found mine on Amazon for like $25.
Otherwise, if you need a quick way up the hill, you can take the elevator from the basement of The College Building up to Benefit Street. It’ll save you a couple minutes of legwork.
Dark fairy dust
Don’t work with charcoal outside the Waterman Building unless your workspace has a linoleum floor. You’ll think you’ll be able to contain the charcoal. You won’t. Charcoal can and will get over everything. It’s the glitter of RISD foundation year. Your friends will hate you if you track it into the lounge.
Stay on top of your credits
I visited my advisor several times to double check that I was on the right path credits-wise, and they gave me the go-ahead for my planned course load. I then learned a semester before graduation that I was two classes short of my major requirements. I managed to vacuum up those last few credits with an extra Wintersession course, plus four studio classes for my final semester (normally you’d want to take three). Other students reported similar problems; two of my friends had to take five studio classes to catch up on credits.
Do check in with your advisor, because they know how to arrange your future course lineup and get you out of credit problems. Just make sure to teach yourself (or get someone else to teach you) how to read the “progress” section on the ss.risd.edu site. That way you won’t have to rely entirely on a busy professor to keep you updated on your “credit score.”
In general, you should be fine credits-wise so long as you take at least three studios and a liberal each semester, and a liberal and a studio each Wintersession.
Just something cute
Unless the Met has changed since the Spring of 2019, they keep coffee and chocolate syrup on hand. That means you can make mochas! Combine two-thirds of a mug of coffee (I recommend Sumatra or another dark roast) with a third a mug of milk. Zap your drink in the microwave. Then add chocolate syrup to taste (I usually pour for three seconds or so) and stir. If whipped cream is available, it’ll be at the ice cream station. You can also and a dash of cinnamon (from the oatmeal station next to the cereals). Tada! A hot drink for class.
Start a personal project
As an upperclassman you can use an ISP to mix coursework and playtime, and get class credit for a personal project. I myself did two ISP’s while at RISD, one for a Warrior Cats fan comic and another for a post-grad comic pitch. It’s fantastic to be able to work with a professor of your choosing on a project you really care about.
MONEY
Wealth gap
If your family makes under $40,000 a year, prepare to feel like an outsider at RISD. There’s extraordinary wealth at this school, and the gap can start to grate on you. I once had a teacher say, “Poor people don’t go to RISD.” Teachers and students will assume you can afford all sorts of things. Just try to keep a level head, and find people you can vent to.
Material costs
Don’t let professors bully you into buying expensive materials. My painting professors would always insist we had to get the fancy oil paints — but when I took them aside to explain my financial situation, they’d allow me to purchase knock-offs or “hues” to save money. In general, never be afraid to check with your professors to see whether there’s a cheaper option. You can also use the Facebook group “RISD free and for sale” to ask whether anyone could give or sell you used materials, or split expensive supplies with a classmate (since most lessons won’t require a whole paint tube or a whole pad of paper). Also: Don’t buy all the materials on your syllabus on the first day. My professors would often hand my classmates and I a list of materials on the first day of class, and we’d all waddle down to the RISD store to buy our supplies for the semester — but every semester, whether to give students more time on an assignment or to pursue a different art lesson, the syllabus would change and I’d no longer need a chunk of the materials I’d purchased at the start of class. I recommend only buying what you know you’ll need for the first few weeks of class, then return to the RISD store periodically throughout the semester.
The materials fund
There’s a scholarship called “the materials fund” that you can apply for at any time. The fund helps students pay for expensive projects; I’ve used the money to purchase oil paints for a 20x40″ canvas painting, and to print over $200-worth of comics. Take advantage of that cash! Unfortunately it takes about two weeks for RISD to process materials fund applications, so unless you know what you want to do for a project a couple weeks ahead of time, you’ll probably have to start it without knowing whether the school will fund it. Just make sure to send off your app as early as possible!
Points
Use your points. Every year hundreds of students lose money because they forget to spend their points (the end of the year’s actually nice that way: your friends will want to spend their stacked-up points before they expire, and that translates to a lot of food gifts). As a freshman you’re forced to use the foundation plan, so you get $250 dining points a semester; that’s not a lot, but at least you can get $12-worth of coffee or snacks per week. This bullet point gets a lot more relevant later on: with a residential meal plan (two meal swipes a day) you get about $45 in points a week; that’s $6 a day to spend on treats that most students forget exists.
MENTAL HEALTH
Accommodations
For neurodivergent folks, make sure to file your papers with the director of disability services and academic support (currently Brittany Goodwin) so you can get accommodations and extensions from professors. I can’t tell you how many times I had to ask for an extension on a project, and some of those extensions wouldn’t have been possible without papers to back me up.
Counseling and psychological services
Utilize CAPS. The rumors are true: freshman year at RISD is quite literally designed to break you. I don’t mean to scare anyone — and some folks will escape the madness with a lucky lineup of easy professors — but foundation year is when professors are encouraged to assign you a hopeless amount of work. You’ll be incentivized to skip out on sleep and self care to get your projects done.
CAPS is there to help you through the stress. You don’t have to be mentally ill or disabled to see someone. The counselors are often booked for anywhere from a few days up to a week ahead of time (big surprise) so you’ll want to schedule an appointment before you’re in a crisis situation. Don’t let your brain tell you, “Oh, it’s not that bad yet. I’ll wait ‘til it gets worse.” Nope. Pick up the phone. It’s okay to go to CAPS even when you’re only mildly upset! Sometimes you’re more badly off than you realize.
If you are in a crisis situation when you call CAPS, you can almost always book a same-day appointment with whichever counselor has a free moment. I actually went to CAPS on an emergency day, sat down with someone new, and liked him so much that I switched over to him from my previous counselor. People will tell you horror stories about CAPS (mostly about how long they had to wait for an appointment), but PLEASE at least give their services a try — preferably two tries, since you may be like me and not click with your first counselor (and they usually spend the first session on formalities anyway). I set up a schedule with CAPS so that I saw a counselor once every two weeks, and it was an honest-to-god life-saver.
It’s scary to go to counseling if you haven’t been before. It can make you feel weak or broken, to have to seek help like that. But on the contrary, going to therapy makes you a strong-ass motherfucker. It takes balls. And CAPS’ support can save your ass when midterms and finals roll around.
Put yourself first
Foundation year, as I mentioned above, is understood by upperclassmen and faculty alike to be a “haze year.” It’s meant to obliterate all your old habits under a hammer of endless coursework, then build you back up from square one. You’ll likely pick up on some rad general stuff your first year, like how to navigate the Adobe Suite (or even Rhino and ZBrush), or how to sew or wood carve or use the 3D printers. But you will be leagues ahead of the game if you go into foundation year with your mental health as your top priority. You can focus on making good art after foundation year, when your classes aren’t seven to eight hours long and you’re no longer told to spend nine to ten hours on each assignment. Freshman year is about survival. Make sure you sleep and eat. For real. It’s super late and you haven’t finished your sculpture for Gareth Jones? Too bad. Go to bed. Have a bad crit or request an extension (no, you don’t need a disability to ask for one. Most professors would prefer you get an assignment done late rather than not at all). Grades don’t matter unless you want to go to grad school, and even then you can get away with some shitty ones here and there. It’s not the end of the world.
Students are afforded two unexcused absences per class—any more than that and they can be dropped from a course. This prompts a lot of students to “save up” their unexcused absences in case they get sick. However: as someone who’s had killer sore throats, coughs, eye appointments and wrist problems, let me tell you — if you keep your professors updated and coordinate with health services, you can make your physical sick days count as excused absences. So unless you absolutely NEED to go to class for a demonstration or a team exercise, use those two unexcused absences per class to sleep or play video games or whatever. When I was at RISD I’d even email my professors to let them know when I’d taken a mental health day. No one ever made a fuss.
Freshman year celebrates students who squander their mental health, because yes — you can meet all your deadlines and come to crit with cool-ass artwork every week, so long as you pull all-nighters a lot and never stop to relax for thirteen weeks. But uh? Don’t do that. It’s not worth the fifteen minutes of fame. Your classmate will get a good crit, but you will get to stave off a depressive episode or an anxiety attack or a work accident due to stress or lack of sleep. You are not superman. It’s so hard to remember when you’re rewarded as a student for your lack of self care, but know that foundation year work habits are not healthy, and regardless of their fame or fortune the people who go on to live by them will someday burn up under the pressure and realize they’ve forgotten how to take care of themselves. It takes years and years for people to unlearn that harmful behavior and recover from such prolonged stress, so the faster you figure out how to put your health first, the better off you’ll be down the road as an artist.
Above all, save your strength and only do what you can. And remember that life will get easier next year! At the very least, most of your classes will start after noon.
