“My professor called it overdetermined. She said it was cold. Too precise. ‘Where’s the feeling? Where’s the feeling?’ she said. It’s as if she wanted me to confess I’d survived a car crash, and then paint that. Maybe slash open an old scar, and smear some real blood on there. She told me the same thing over and over again, but I could never please her.” The words stuck to the roof of Penelope’s mouth—I could never please her—and it seemed obvious to her she had been right to leave RISD. If she couldn’t give her teachers what they wanted, if they would never accept her, there was no point to
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