Art school is so very different from taking community art classes.
Community art:
Hi, I'm your teacher, and I want you to come up here and watch me do this thing or technique....Now, here's a list of art supplies. Don't spend too much, just go to Hobby Lobby or Michael's and get whatever is on sale. Get student paints, like the ones Liquitex makes. They're cheapest. Oh, and bring in some photos of what you'd like to paint! What's that? How many? Oh gosh, that's up to you. How many paintings do you want to do in our six weeks together? We're going to have such fun!!
Art School:
Hi, I'm your art instructor. Now watch what I do, and this is how you should do it too. I'm not saying you have to do it this way...just saying that if your art instructor says to do it, then do it. Also, here's a list of supplies you'll need DO NOT LET ME SEE A SINGLE TUBE OF LIQUITEX BASICS IN THIS ROOM you need to get quality art supplies to do quality work, and cheap paint has no pigment and you just end up using more.
Here's the syllabus. This is what you'll do, and you'll like it.
After each work of art, I want two to three pages, typed and double spaced, of what you did, how you did it, why you did it that way, and how it felt doing it. All of these projects are due on the due date. or the end of class.
Oh, and there's readings, and discussion questions, for each project. You'll frequently be working on several projects at once. Ready? GO!
Of course, the result is that you do more complex things, and think in more complex ways. This semester, I took Art Practices I, the foundational course that was apparently devised by the University of New Mexico. It used to be that art students foundational courses were 2-D design, and then 3-D design, as well as drawing 1 and 2. Now there's another option and I honestly do not know if I'm supposed to take them all.
I thoroughly enjoyed this. At one point my instructor gently scolded me for turning in work late, to which I replied, "oh no, now I won't be able to get a job!" She accepted this in good humor.
And yes. I was the oldest person in the room.
I won't bother posting all the things we worked on. But of course...there is the ubiquitous color wheel. Which I received an A- on. That's not a screw up in my painting below; that's a shadow.
Next, the "chaos and control" project.
Next, we did shadow puppets and a performance.
There are not enough words to describe my hatred for this project. 
I am not a performer. (images by shutterstock, colorax, and another company I can't remember.)
Finally, we did a "personality painting" on a 15 x 15 wooden panel.
At this point, I considered it finished. My art instructor did not. She felt that the lower left lacked something.
So I added something.
It was a little crazy, but I learned about glazing and composition from this.
The very last project was a text installation project. We were to choose a word or phrase, create letters, using a font of our choice, out of cardboard. Then we were to paint them or otherwise embellish them and finally, "install" them somewhere and photograph them.
At one point I just got bored and took pictures of the fish in our pond.
Once I had the pictures I wanted, I edited them, using filters for the contrast and light.
The final submission:
SOJOURN is a good word for the break I'm taking right now to work on my health and fitness. I'm working 2 jobs, going to art school, and I'm in my 50s....so my health isn't the greatest. I'm taking a brief break from IRL classes to take a couple of online classes and focus on my health for a while.
This class, overall, helped me think and do art in ways that I might not have before. I tend towards a "painterly" type of work, and by forcing me to complete other works, I feel like I've grown as an artist.
...