The Studio Deal

Had a leisurly breakfast before heading off to class at 12:45 in the afternoon. I was surprised to find myself in the same studio room as before. It breaks down like this: there are 48 students in the program split into three rooms. They told us that we were separated and placed into our studios to get a wide varieties of GPA, gender, race, etc. All I know is that they moved about 3/4 of each class to a new studio and gave them a one teacher, while the other quarter was left behind and joined by a new 3/4 from another studio and given another teacher.

Myself I'm in the same room, one desk over from where I worked last semester. It's not a bad room, its the only one with a couch and easy chair. We got the shaft on the studio teacher though. It was downhill after Professer Hartman anyway. Out of the two studio teachers we could have had, I got the "worse" one.

Our studio is five hours long. He wants to know where you are for the entire time span, and he wants you working that entire time. The other think is that he's the guy who loves work. His class last semester spent a ton of overtime working on numerous study models, regardless to whether or not they really needed them. I've got the hunch he likes being a slave driver to get us used to doing repetative iterative work like we will at our future jobs. For example. We got our first project today. Part of the project packet is a diagram at 1/8" scale. For monday he wanted us to draw it at 1/4" scale. Why? No clue. He also wanted a study model. It's going to be a very long semester.

Our first project looks like fun, though. We have to design a pedestrian bridge to span a 60' canal in Phoenix. It's supposed to be made out of wood beams and planks, no cladding material (like glass, plywood, steel, masonry) allowed. We're to incorporate our knowlege of wooden structures to make sure that its stucturally feasable and sound. It goes without saying that it should be poetic, elegent, and creative. It's also due in four weeks, a pretty rapid timeline.

Tonight I went out to eat with Nickee at Oreganos, a really pretty good, cheap Italian place near ASU. She's been doing well, has a house with two roomies near campus. She's taking nursing now at a community college, and still working for Trader Joes, although she's been looking for work in the medical community. I saw Jason while I was there, and told him my parents had asked about him. His hair is still short, and he works on motorcycles.

Enough for now. Time for bed.