GanzChroma 0020
I pretty much set the standard for the 90-minute lunch break here in Vancouver for almost a decade. This came about because we took too long to return from our lunches and running our errands around town.
While attending my mother's prayers in Singapore, I had some time to think about the future of my work and what kind of company culture I wanted to foster.
The world did not collapse, nor did my students become weaker artists when I introduced the 90-minute lunch break. In fact, it is one of the reasons why I have had a high placement rate.
Students got the much-needed mental break, had time to socialize, run errands, head to the gym, ask their peers for help, catch up on shots, and most importantly, feel at ease in the studio.
Most of my students considered the studio their second home, and some of them only left the studio to go home and sleep. While their dedication is admirable, it also is an unhealthy one. I know this because I used to do it myself.
I decided that when I returned to Vancouver, I was going to make two changes.
Change No. 1 - Introduce a new 2-hour lunch break.
Change No. 2 - My classes end at 4 pm.
My primary reason for an even longer break was that I wanted to spend time with my spouse. I wanted to go for long walks together, eat slow lunch together, and maybe even do some light gaming and reading.
I believe how we organize our time shows what we value.
The secondary reason was to encourage students and staff to move. Just get up and do something else. The brain needs to digest information, and often, a lot of great ideas come from simply going for a walk.
Yes, mathematically, this reduces the instructional hours to 4 hours a day. That roughly is 500 hours in a 25-week program, and that is not including any mentorship hours. Between recording every demo at ACE and having it accessible on Notion, and also having access to all my past lectures and access to mentors, I believe ACE can still deliver on the promise of training someone to be a compositor.
And sometimes people ask me, how do I know if any of my plans are going to work? I don't. But it costs me nothing to believe that it won't. And a lot of times, doing something that is counter intuitive to my own sensibilities has only seem to have added value to my life.
And being able to spend time with the person I love is one of the simple joys in my life.
💬 hashtag#AlphaChromatica hashtag#Chroma hashtag#HeyGanz hashtag#2HrLunchBreak