Pre-semester whining

This pre-semestser studio is throwing me a little bit for a loop. I can understand wanting to get us prepared for the studio environment by doing an actual little ungraded project, but this is really going too far. There are many good reasons to have a pre-semester studio- get students aquainted with the studio environment, learn the software, find out where you can buy materials, figure out how to laser cut, establish standards, etc. However, I cannot understand why we are being pushed to spend upwards of 16 hours a day for the last two weeks of freedom before classes being in an ungraded orientation.


A lot of these students just arrived from China for the first time. You would think that you might show a little consideration in letting them perhaps get a little more settled, hmm? I consider myself lucky that we got a week and a half to settle in and explore the town a bit before these silly studio shenanigans.

Our pre-semester studio instructor, Jung, really wants us to have something interesting and nice to put on display so that when the architecture faculty come in on the first day of school monday, they will say, "F***, I want these students in my studio." I appreciate his dedication to the academic and theoretical field but I dont really feel that his area of interest and my area of interest in architecture coincide much.

Oh well, time to sleep.