"You came here to work, St.Louis is dead."

Last night, everyone in the pre-semester studio returned at 9 pm to bring their models downstairs. Most groups were done, although there were a few groups who took a while longer- one group actually worked until 4am to complete their amazing model- which was completely laser cut and looked like a fantastic teardrop shaped spaceship.

We all wandered around the studio, looking at each other's models until Sung Ho showed up and started telling people to bring their models downstairs. We brought our models down and he showed us where he wanted them, stretched all along the full length of Givens hall, the main thoroughfare of the architecture school.

As we were making final adjustments to the models, it came out that we would not have studio until friday of this week, which would give us effectively four free days, unless you count our other required classes. People were tongue-in-cheek talking about perhaps getting out to actually do something in St.Louis, maybe finding a good restaurant, exploring their neighborhoods, finding out where the grocery store it, etc. mostly small barbs that we've basically been tied to this studio the past two weeks. As he strode away, our instructor commented "you came here to work, St.Louis is dead."

Anyway. It was fun to see the row of models. On the stands, in the hall, they looked good. It was interesting that while there were a few shared typologies of form (the vertical box) most of the models in fabrication and form looked radically different. There was one that was covered in bondo to form a smooth Naguchi blob that reminded me of the crashed alien spaceship from Alien, there was one that looked like a wooden tornado, there were models that looked like complicated machines.

I had a professor once who dismissed basswood as a material because of its propensity to make things look attractive, in his view, that a weak design could be hidden in basswood. He referred to a studio of basswood models rather dismissively as a "basswood parade", and that name has stuck with me.

Anyway, that was sunday night. Today is monday, registration day where we met with out advisors. I hate to say it but registration is a frustrating affair. We were given no indication of how to register or when to register apart from being directed to a certain website. We have to wait to meet with our advisors to register for classes. Classes begin tomorrow. We were supposed to review courses that we want to take and discuss them with our advisors but they only put the booklets out with the information this morning. Yes, this information was also online, but difficult to find and access. It is nice that our advisors are actual professors- mine is a PhD with degrees from Harvard and MIT, and that there's only a handfull of students for each advisor, but at the same time, he didn't really have that much info on the process. I threw out a few course titles I was interested in after hurriedly perusing the catalog, and he recommended most of them. It was a pretty quick meeting.

We actually register ourselves for the classes we want to take, they just 'unlock' our registration accounts. Registration was not so tricky itself, but by the time we got around to it, two of the classes I wanted to take threw me on a waitlist. Also, all of the 2+ waived out of certain classes, but these classes were automatically added to our class schedules. Some of the classes changed names to make them more obscure- "site planning" became "Environmental systems" for example, and one class is actually mandatory but only mentions that it is mandatory in the course description and nowhere else. I tracked down the registrar and confirmed that yes, it is mandatory, and that more information would be forthcoming. Even though it is a 1 credit hour class on weekends, considering that we're registering for classes TODAY, when exactly would this information be more forthcoming? I also learned from inquiring that there is a 2 week drop/add period, which is also, not mentioned in any of the material given to us or easily found online.

The faculty and advisors are very friendly, I ended up getting some of the registration information from the dean of the school himself, and despite the fact that this is their second busiest time of year, they were all nice and happy to answer my questions. It would be nice to have a little more direction, but as my downstairs neighbor pointed out, we're in grad school, and you pretty much do what you want to do.