update

Felt really run down yesterday.
The day began badly. I had planned to meet my mentor in downtown phoenix before 8:30 in the morning, but I set my alarm for 6:30 AM I think. I'd been up late the night before, and so I staggered over to the clock and realized it was too early. I thought I reprogrammed it to wake me up an hour later, but I learned never to trust my brain before 7 AM. I awoke and the first thing I noticed was how light the room was. I felt pretty rested- must have been a full 90 minute sleep cycle. I look at the clock. 8:10. So I throw my nice clothes on, grab my stuff, and hit the road. Traffic is bad, but not terrible, so I end up 15 minutes late. My mentor doesn't seem to mind. We talk about the pool project and he gives me general advice and some ideas.

In studio, today we present our findings on the site analysis. It's informal, but I've taken the responsibility of priniting my cut and fill analysis on two 20"x20" sheets, the standard size our instructor decided on. This is a large format print. I've learned from the last project that the cheapest place to get large stuff printed is at the college of design print shop upstairs. There's still two hours until class, and I only need black and white.

The problem is its run by students, apparently from the road development poeple. I can barely get them to talk to me. They yawn and tell me it will be three hours, minimum, before they can do it. They have three projects to print ahead of mine. Physical printing takes maybe two minutes. I stake out other print shops around campus- no one can handle 20x20 in less than a few days. I go back to the upstairs print shop. They wont even talk to me. My friend Aldo is there, getting something printed. I asked him how he managed to get them to do it. He said he had to wait in the tiny room for over an hour, aggrivated, I go back down to studio and try to get our classroom plotter working. It could print what I need. After spending half an hour working with three people to install the paper, it prints my work in very fine, light red. Completely unreadable from more than a foot away. Completely out of time, I print it out on 8.5 x 11 and call it done.

Inexplicably, a full college meeting is called that morning. The only notification we recieve is our history of architecture professor mentions it among a lot of other stuff. That and our studio teacher lets us know fifteen minutes in advance.

I can't tell you how aggrivating it is to attend a college which is all about the communication of ideas, yet communicates nothing to its students. They pulled the same stunt with the internship meeting! If they want me somewhere, send me a email (more than an hour in advance) or put up some posters or announcements!

The only gratificiation I felt was when I realized they called it because the entire college faculty is stressed out over the accredation. The accredation team comes this weekend and will stay a few days. They had us post student work all over the place. At the meeting, they hastily explained the college's plans for a glorious and groundbreaking future (just in case someone asks) and that if the accredation pulls you aside to ask questions about the college, you should be honest, but don't make it into a "bitch session" (thier words).

I'm no idiot, and I hope none else is going to say or do anything in front of the accredation team that would devalue the college from which they get thier degree.

Anyway, felt stressed and listless all day- no patience at all. Its the lack of sleep, food, and the stuff I need to get done. For next wednesday, we need to have three models of possible designs for our pool complexes. The day before that, I have my history paper due, which I still havn't started writing. Thursday I've got to give a ten minute presentation on how my latin american design paper is coming. I need to spend some serious time focusing and narrowing my topic down to something managable. Today is my structures midterm. Not looking forward to it, although I think I'll do ok.

Did get some good news though. They're moving the travel scholarship presentation meeting to the wednesday after I get back from Europe. This will give me a little bit of time to prepare something and practice while I'm over there.

As I was in serious need of decompression after studio, I went swimming with Nickee at a public pool. She does swimming as a regular workout and I wanted to experiance a public pool firsthand for my architecture project. It wasn't a bad design. You could see the pool right when you walked in, and while the locker rooms reeked of chlorine, they were nicely tiled and had high ceilings and bounced lighting. Swimming, followed by a hot shower, felt great.

but back to study.