Reflections on four years

When I started college at ASU, it was my silver metal. I had had vauge notions of going to an Ivy League school, but of course, when you only apply to one of them, odds are against you. As I began freshman year, I promised myself that I would get as good an education as Rice students if I worked as hard as they did (or what I imagined they did). Two years later, I was happy to be at ASU.

ASU made me consider the parts of my life that I’d long neglected, or considered insignificant in relation to school. For me, it taught me that education is not just what teachers tell you, but also what happens outside of class, working on my own, discovering how to enjoy myself, spending time with friends, filling out my life. ASU really mellowed me out, allowed me to take a step back and look at the larger picture. Sometimes, for me, watching a spectaular sunset is important than getting to class on time. I’ve learned to forgive myself sometimes.

I think that if I’d gone to Rice straight from high school, I would have missed the bigger picture. I used to think of education as its own end, higher than anything else. I would have done well there, firmly entrenched in academia, but would I have been happier? I don’t think so. If I went there now, knowing what I know, I think I would be able to get more out of it.

I think I’ve mostly fulfilled my promise to myself. An architecture degree is easily the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I got through the first year on my high school academia honors mindset, the second year on the challenge of acceptance to upper division, the third year on the pure love of architecture, and the fourth year on attempting to understand the relation of architecture to larger issues.

Before I started the program, I was warned by my aunt who also happens to be an architect. She told me, truthfully, that it’s a very hard road to go, and you spend a lot of time with a small group of people, and that unless you love it, its not worth it. Good advice. I decided to go for architecture anyway. Freshman year, I was in a special program where I lived in a dorm with about 20 other architecture students in my class, and we had special acess to professors, shared studio space with the class a year ahead of ours, and dedicated facilities close to the architecture building. Interestingly, only two of the original 20 graduated this year in the architecture program: Molly, and me.

Some of my friends have been dissapointed with where we ultimately ended up, but I think ASU did a decent job of getting us to a certain point. No, I can’t immediately hop into the field as a project architect, but I can design a building, I have some knowledge of all the systems and parts that go into a project, and a good foundation of design. I’ve also picked up a half dozen computer programs for designing, drafting, and rendering which I could turn around and use by themselves.

Four summers ago, I had my first job scooping ice cream for retirees in an antiques market. I think I was paid somewhere in the range of six dollars an hour. Now, I’m taking a salaried position at one of the most prolific architecture firms in the valley.

Outside of school, I have been astounded by all that I have done in the last four years, including backpacking through Europe, tropical island vacations, a semester abroad in South America which is the highlight of my life so far, music, a vastly expanded social and dating life compared to high school, and too many other travels and adventures to mention. It’s been good.

Welcome to Spring Break

I think I've found a good solution to how to get to work. I'm going to buy a car.

But in the meantime. I've discovered a great alternative. ASU president Michael Crow drives me downtown.

The way this works is that Crow saw through the establishment of a downtown campus for ASU. This campus has classes used by regular students at the Tempe campus, who really did not want to A) Fight traffic, or B) Pay for downtown parking. So part of the deal is a free shuttle bus which runs from ASU's tempe campus straight to downtown.

Friday morning, I biked to the shuttle stop on ASU in less than ten minutes. The shuttle bus left at 6:30 AM. I was the only one on it, which feels a little strange, but ok. The bus dropped me at Polk and First st, which was another ten minute bike ride to work. So I got my workplace at 7:05. I had time to bike around the neighborhood, and pop into a Jack in the Box for breakfast.
Next time, I'll take the 7 AM shuttle and get another half an hour of sleep in the morning.

Work was good, simple tasks to do, so I filled in the rest of the time really getting everything right in the programs, and doing some areal photography work over the site. I rode home with a bunch of chittering, giggling, Devil's Advocates, the peppy student guides and salespeople who give tours of ASU to graduating kids with thier parents. It's hard to believe there was so much enthusiasm for ASU. They were like evangleist youth groups spreading the Good Word, so pure was thier faith in ASU.

I got my two other books in the mail. One was Images of the City by Lynch, and the other was Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut. I love Vonnegut. His books are like tinted glasses to look at your world. Some books are good at drawing you in and making you forget the world around you. Others are good for making you look at the world around you. I like the book so far, Cat's Cradle was better, Vonnegut seems more resigned and embittered by the world around him in this one. Image of the City was recommended to me by my old history of architecture professor and friend Dr. Morton, while he was reviewing my project.

Listen: Friday was also my mid-semester review. Five of us pinned up in the hall outside our classroom at a time. One person got the board, and the other four shared two huge movable whiteboards which we pinned up on both sides. We completely took over the corridor and clogged it up. Our reviewers in the early part were actually two thirds of the Argentine faculty. Milagros, a faculty from southern Argentina, and Professor Claudio Vekstein, whom we all know from our many adventures south of the equator.

I went late in the day, but the reviewers really liked my work. The idea of putting up a facade of another building on the old mill was a really controvercial decision which made my studio teacher (art and theory background) nearly come to blows with Milagos (brutalist modernism background). It's fun when reviewers fight. Especially since they'll typically give you ammunition for later development. Everybody loved the patio on top of the grainery. That shot with the silhouette and the sunset nailed it. That was the money shot, even if it was completely fabricated. It's the idea of what they could see rather than the precise angle or height (I shot the sunset from on top of A mountain, a good several hundred feet above where the top of the grainery is).

Saori's studio was not so fortunate. Her studio all looked really unhappy leaving friday. Seems like Professor Spellman wasn't too happy with the state of things, or the amount of work. So there's lots of work for them over spring break. Our studio teacher told us that she didn't want us to worry about working over spring break.

After studio, Saori and I and Jamie (old roomate) met up with a bunch of grad student girls from our Buenos Aires trip, and we sat ate mexican food and drank margaritas and talked for about two hours. One of them summed up the problem with all our of studios/thesises. "We're halfway through the semester, but we're not halfway done yet."

So that was friday. Today I picked up Sally and Jonathan's van at thier apartment and took it in for an oil change which was part of the deal that I made with them to borrow it over spring break. Better, really since Sally left me money for it too. Anyway, after the oil change, I watched a movie, relaxed, read about half of Breakfast of Champions and then worked on my sketchbook.

My sketchbook, incidently, has about 320 more pages that I have to fill with drawings and sketches. This sketchbook when I turn it in will consititute most of my grade for my sketching class. So there is some serious work to do, especially considering that I have five weeks.

Five weeks. I have five weeks of school before graduation. I need to get on the ball with figuring out all the finalities and nicieties of the graduation ceremony and protocalls. And I need to figure out a place to live too, as the lease here is up in mid may.