Last night at 9:45 I finally finished that wretched fingerprint after working for 4 more hours. It took a very, very long time but I’m glad I put all the effort into it; today on the board it was referred to positively and the TA stepped back and said "damn" when I showed him my work. I think I'm going to go ahead and lump that in with the positive feedback category. The professor (prof Adams) basically told us to work on the foreground, keeping in mind that blank space is part of our work, and then told us to get started. I kid you not.

“Don’t forget that when finding the solution for this problem that if you do a negative you have a problem in a problem.”

Problem? So far we’ve painted our fingerprint. The problem would be….what exactly?

“Ah. You want to know what the problem is. It’s mentioned in my syllabus through two ancient Hebrew proverbs: ‘The problem is the problem’.”

“And the second?”

“‘There is no solution. Seek it lovingly.’ You have your fingerprint, now get some work done.”

I was able to grasp what was desired when talking with the much more helpful TA. Apparently we need to view our piece abstractly, work figure/ground, activate and engage the empty space. I have an idea of what to do and I’m becoming more excited about the problem, even though I’m still clueless as to what the problem is.