school and some other things

Orientation. What a big deal when you're an incoming freshman! By no means is it entertaining or new information when you're a transfer. At least FIDM's orientation is nothing compared to what felt like days at SPU. It was fun to see that the staff at FIDM is professional and then out of nowhere they hit you with some smart comment or sarcastic quip. It's pretty entertaining, it makes the atmosphere feel more mature because they treat you like an adult, they expect you to roll with the punches, especially when they tease you. I don't remember if I said this before, but the department head for interior design is amazing. Her name is Dinah, and she's as sassy as the other advisors, and extremely helpful. She has completely taken care of my schedule this quarter because we both agreed it was a light one. This quarter, with such an influx of students and the way they register, meant that we SPU students were out of luck. This morning we met and she had sorted everything out, and taken us to meet our placement office advisor.

My classes are as follows: Professional Practices for Interior Design, Survey of Architecture & Interior Design I, Perspective Techniques, Digital Media, Retail Design Concepts.

I have each class once a week for three hours. So I'm technicaly in class three days a week. This is how FIDM likes to organize things because they want their students to also be out in the field and get part-time jobs. I'm excited to get a job, I'm going to try reallllly hard to find someone who implements green or sustainable design into their practice. I've been researching this afternoon and have come across some pretty incredible portfolios. Some of the designers do everything from furniture design to set design on TV shows and movies, as well as residential projects. I think I have found one I'm really interested, close to home, but we'll see what happens later.

After Orientation I hung out at home for a little while and then went out to Santa Monica in attempts to catch a vidal sassoon academy student who wanted to correct mine and Sarah's unfortunate recent haircuts. They were closed, but we did find a yummy little creperie, and ended up getting sandwhiches. Then we found a blockbuster and rented the movie Bobby. It is a star studded film, and tells the story of Bobby Kennedy from the Ambassador Hotel in LA. The film followed the lives of the senator and also the people who were also shot at the hotel. The other people in the shooting survived, but it was kind of a bittersweet film. The American people loved the Kennedy family. Anyways, there was a part in the film that I thought was pretty funny. There were scenes where they played actual footage from Robert Kennedy's appearances and speeches, and in this particular scene he was meeting with a group of young kids. He was saying how in ten years people were going to have to wear gas masks in New York, the pollution would be so bad there. It made me laugh because life obviously wasn't that way in 1978, but it also made an impression that environmental issues were of great concern 3 decades ago, and not much has changed. The only difference now is that we're going to be facing a problem that we can't push aside for another decade pretty soon.

Not to overspiritualize anything, but I have heard many pastors tell me that you know you're calling by your reaction to things. If you can't stand the way something is run, there is a good chance you are called to exactly that thing. In this situation, it makes me so angry that people don't care, and makes my blood boil when I think about how this generation and generations have not made the effort or actions to change the course of the environment for generations to come. The problem keeps getting passed off, and not enough is done. Anyways, that's enough of that, I could preach environmental change till I'm blue in the face. I'm still learning, studying, and questioning, but I do know that it is a significant matter, and that if I could make the slightest difference, it would be worth dedicating my career to being proactive and an advocate for change. Okay, this time I'm done.

Last night when I got home, every parking spot was taken! Not to mention there was street cleaning in the morning on the East side. Luckily, someone left their spot a few streets down perpendicular to mine. Unfortunately, it was on the street cleaning side. So I got up this morning at 8:30 am to move it. It's like nobody goes to work around here, or they completely take advatage of parking passes, or they have too many cars for this street, because I still couldn't find a space! haha. So I drove up to the main street and found a spot, then I went back to bed. :)

I'm happy to be here. I miss my friends, a lot. But to be honest, I think I needed to get away from being totally social in order to concentrate. It's so easy to distract myself with hanging out with friends, because they're so accessible. Not that I don't absolutely love hanging out with my friends, but a lot of times I used hanging out as another means to procrastinate. So, none of that. I have a lot of hand drafting to look forward to, to show the range of my work, and I'm pretty excited about it. I love nothing more than to sit in studio for hours and just work, draft, and see it all come together. Fortunately the classes are structured as such, a little bit of lecture, and then plain studio time! Of course I hope that I make friends, I think I will when I get plugged into a community, like church and what not. The church I want to go to still hasn't started, but in the mean time I think I'll stick with Mosaic, at least a few more times.

I have long weekends every weekend with no class on Fridays. So if anyone ever wants to visit, please, come! And come on Thursday night, stay thru Monday morning, or longer if you don't mind waiting for me to come home from class. I can't wait to see Seattle again, give it my regards.