Up to the Presentation

Today, I presented my degree project to a panel of six architects and some Wash U faculty as well.

• Alfredo Paya
• Carlos Jimenez
• Catherine Dean
• Christof Jantzen
• Phil Holden
• Marten Felsen

Today was friday. Let's rewind a few days.

Tuesday- last full meal. Went out to the quirky vietnamese place and got a bowl of beef stew with egg noodles. Got four hours of sleep that night.

Wednesday- taco bell and four hours of sleep. Late that night, printed my final boards.

Thursday-  Forgot to eat. Built a model. Tay came from Bloomington. Five hours of sleep.

To recap: I've been averaging four hours of sleep for the last four days. Yesterday, I didn't even eat. I've been drinking coffee and under considerable stress, and coupled with the exhaustion and the fatigue, it's not surprising I didn't feel hungry.

Taylor came out to see our final presentations and to get in a little extra time with us in St. Louis. He was worried about coming in so "late" with an ETA of 11pm the night before our presetnations. He shouldn't have worried- we were both up and working in studio. Saori was finishing her model and I was fussing over my boards on the wall and going over what I was going to say in my presentation.

It was wonderful to let him in the locked front door of the building, me wearing the santa hat, and him in his gray coat and red scarf.  I showed him my pinned up project and ran through my presentation with him. We said hello to Saori and left to head home with Tay's car.

When we got home, I was barely coherant enough to pull bedding out for Tay on the futon, and then I showered and crashed. Saori got back an hour or two later.

This morning, I woke up feeling awful. I felt like I'd spent the night as roadkill on a street flooded with raw sewage. I was trembling, nauseous, with a pounding headache, and according to Tay, white as a sheet. 

It was a panic attack- I was filled with horror and dread at the inescapable presentation I was about to give. I was nearly sick in the toilet. If I hadn't not eaten anything in the past 36 hours, I probably would have been sick. 

Tay gave me some great encouragement and Saori did too, and after sitting down for awhile and doing some deep breathing exercises, I reminded myself that it was all on the boards, and that if I just described what I saw on the boards like a simpleton, I'd still pass.

I drank some hot water, and if someone would have filmed me, I would have won an Oscar for "Most Feebly-Half-Eaten Piece of Toast" With a little carbohydrates, and some encouragement, I began to feel better and pulled myself together enough to roughly shave the long hairs off my neckbeard. We were running out of time so I said "screw it" to my wild hair, and threw on my skinny black chinos, white button down shirt, and gray blazer.

We all drove to school and got coffee. Saori went to finish up her stuff and I wandered up to make sure everything was pinned up as I'd left it the night before. I also booted up my old laptop and loaded my animation to run on  a loop. At 9, we all assembled and split up into the two review groups. I was presenting second, so I sat nervously and trembling through the first presentation.

I presented in the hallway, which I once thought was a pretty crappy place to present, but really not bad for these reasons:

1. It's a huge fucking wall. There's something like 40 feet of wall space, in seven foot tall panels, uninterrupted by as much as a fire alarm.
2. You're the only one presenting. It's a space for one person, so the reviewers eyes don't wander around comparing other drawings with yours.
3. There's no distractions. It's a hallway, but there's no classes anymore, so nobody is walking nearby or passing through.

The only crappy thing about it is that the space is really narrow, so reviewers with their backs to the wall can't see the boards at the end if your presentation is 27 feet long, like mine.

Anyway, I had four boards, each one 12' long by 3' high, two massive renderings (besides the ones on my boards), each 40 inches long, a working model of the sampling pod at 1/4" scale, and an animation on my laptop showing the varying configurations of the sampling modules and an flyaround of an exploded module.