The Penny W. Stamps Lectures -- some students may be tempted to think of them as a convenient time for a long nap in a dark theatre. They are missing out. By that I don't mean that you might wake up from that nap to find there is a video of a woman, naked under a clear trench-coat filled with money, dancing around a live cow to Mozart arias. (This actually happened to a friend a mine at a Penny Stamps Lecture. Suffice it to say that despite the humor of her reaction, this isn't something you want to have happen to you.) Instead I mean you are missing out on one of the things that makes Michigan A&D special.

For those of you who don't know what the Penny Stamps Speaker Series is, it's a once a week lecture all art and design students are require to go to. Each week a new presenter is brought in to give a talk at the Michigan Theater. They can be designers, artists, filmmakers, philosophers, writers, thinkers, magicians, puppeteers, dancers, scientists, comedians, faculty members, etc.

What does this mean for you? You won't like every lecture, but you'll love some of them. So, should you skip most of them and look on the schedule to see if a good one is coming up? (Well, attendance is taken and any missed lectures require you to watch a recording of the lecture and write a 300 word essay. It's a pain.) But guess what? You never know when a good lecture is coming. That architect whose description made him look like he'd be a dullard? A real hoot with a great sense of humor and sass. The art critic? Turns out he's got a lot to say, and doesn't care who he offends when saying it. The futurist? Five words: grandpa giving a pro-communist rant.

So you are being a good student, attending lectures, staying conscious during them, and enjoying the speakers making verbal jabs at your teachers, performing magic tricks, describing whole new perspectives on life or making the occasional highly inappropriate non-sequitur (not included here because they most likely would have been edited out of this post, so we'll just say it rhymes with bay-mole rex). Let's say you really loved a lecture. How about going to the question and answer section after the lecture? It isn't that long and is often the best part. In my experience most of your questions will be answered, and often times the lecturer really opens up after his or her talk. There is some free food there too, and if there is one thing we college art students love, it's free food. Only a few students go to the question and answer period, but those who do almost never regret it. There is little more to say than that this is often, for me, where the real meat of a lecture happens.

So, how can we step it up one more notch? How can we take the Penny Stamps experience all the way from nap opportunity to mind-blowing life-changing wonder?

After every lecture two grad students, two professors and two undergrad students get to go to dinner with the guest speaker. Now for some, if not many, this could be just a free meal because the speaker wasn't someone you connected with. But, if you see someone on the schedule who looks really interesting or who is a hero of yours, APPLY FOR THE DINNER. Many people never apply for a single dinner. I've been to a few and all but one have been incredibly entertaining and enriching, while a couple are probably going to be some of the highlights of my college career. How often do you get to have an in-depth and rigorous discussion on being a young artist with one of the greatest modern dancers of our time? About as often as you get to go up onto the stage of Hill Auditorium with your fellow dinner attendees around midnight to get a private organ concert by one of music's most radical organists. It isn't a hyperbole when I say that the Penny Stamps Lectures, which too many students may be tempted write off after a few bad lectures, have had a major effect on who I am as an artist.

In summation, come to lecture, come to question and answer sessions, apply for dinners. To not do so is to not take advantage of the once in a lifetime opportunities the Penny Stamps Series gives you.

... and there is free food.