It's hard to believe the semester is already about halfway over. I had my first midterm last friday, and I'm moving along on my studio project for digital representation. We actually started using rendering programs on the computer to add light and shadow to the virtual three-dimensional model we made, which is really exciting to see.

(image of my design)

There's been a lot going on for the past few weeks too. For Mardi Gras, Stetson East dining hall was opened late full of traditional foods, dessert, decorations, music, favors, etc. and games that encouraged a lot of student involvement. A lot of students came out to enjoy the festivities.

Next weekend, I'm looking forward to my intramural soccer game; I'm on a co-ed team with students from my building, which is really fun. We play in Cabot gym almost every weekend, and it's nice to just get my feet to a ball once in a while after playing soccer for about thirteen years.

Next Saturday also is my residence hall's dodgeball tournament arranged by the hall President, which should be interesting considering I know very little about how to play.

And soon enough, break will have begun. I'm really excited to go home and see my friends and family. I haven't been home since classes started again at the beginning of January, so it has been at least six weeks. Can't wait!

Hope everyone's semester and midterms are going well!

I'm really excited to be home this week. It's been nice to relax some and get to spend time with family and friends. I was able to celebrate my mom's birthday with a small family get-together Sunday and go with my sisters and brother ice skating, which was very fun. I look forward to visiting with my aunts, uncles, and cousins this week too.

I've also been able to catch up on some summer internship applications. I've been researching architectural firms around the New Haven area in hopes of finding a position that will allow to gain some experience with and further understanding of sustainable design projects. It's been really helpful for me to be going through this process while taking the required Co-op class this semester. It has been very informative in terms of resumes, cover letters, and interviewing. We also have had older students and representatives from architectural firms within the Boston area come in and discuss their experiences with the Co-op process.

So it has already been over a week since spring break...hard to believe how fast this semester is going. I really enjoyed my time at home, and I can't wait to go back.

With only about a month left of classes (and some warmer weather coming-hopefully), there's a lot going on. In the next couple weeks, I will be be completing my room selection for the fall. My roommate and I went on the housing tour last week, which I thought was very helpful. For those of you in the selection process that have any questions or uncertainty regarding where you'd want to live next year, it is definitely worth the hour and a half to make next year's living situation the best it can be.

We also have class selection coming up. Luckily for me, the architecture program is very structured and I don't need to worry much about picking any of my classes for next year. The administration groups the students alphabetically into Division A and B, and creates class schedules for them for the five years they will be here. The only choices that need to be made during this time are for your electives or classes for minors.

There are also some fun activities coming up as well. The honors freshman dorms - Kennedy Hall and West Village F - will be putting on a talent show next Monday, which is sure to be a good time. And the Honors Evening is coming up on the 31st, which is a night for upperclass students to present their honors projects and celebrate with a ceremony and dinner.

I am also going to be starting my final project in studio this week. We will be designing a cafe for the area by the Christian Science Center. I'm excited to integrate all the software we've learned in digital representation thus far to create the final product.

It's a few weeks in, and everyone is already back in the swing of things. I have been working steadily on the current studio project, which is designing a boathouse and cafe space for a site on the Fort Point Channel (right next to the Children's Museum). There's been a lot to consider, and it has been slightly overwhelming at times. But I'm excited to try to figure out the logistics and find the right execution of a final product.

(site for which I'm designing a boathouse and cafe)

I've had a lot other events and activities going on as well. There's an honors student council meeting is this evening, where I've joined the events committee. Already students have organized a campus wide game of capture the flag taking place Saturday, which should be a fun break during the weekend.

The AIAS group is also hosting a Design Forum event in the African American Institute Thursday evening. Architecture professors will be bringing in presentations of projects they've worked on to share with students where interaction and questions are encouraged.

I'm also really excited to have a couple friends from home visiting this weekend. We'll get to do all the 'typical tourist' activities and see all the sights and sounds of Boston. (I'm sure there will be some pictures in the next post!)

Please feel free to post and questions or comments about any aspects of NU life. I look forward to reading and responding to them!

So I just got back this evening from a trip to UCONN! Nearly all of my closest friends from home go there, and it was so much fun to reunite with everyone I haven't seen since summer vacation. When everybody gets together (though cliche) its like we never left, which its really nice. We all just slip right back into our normal group dynamic.
It was also really nice to escape the city for a few days (despite the never-ending rain). The campus is such a contrast to Northeastern's considering the student populations are very close. UCONN is much more expansive and sprawling, meaning everything is a pretty far walk. The buildings are all really similar too --very collegiate-looking brick facade, making it all the more difficult to navigate in the dark when I arrived. And its set in Storrs, where there is much more green spaces, trees, even horses!

I also have my mid-review for my second design project in studio - a library for the community of Southie - coming up Wednesday. An outside juror will be coming in to give us feedback on our designs. There's a lot more to consider this time around, especially considering this is our first true multi-level building. So tomorrow will definitely be a day in the studio to finish up computer drawings and modeling.

I'm already about halfway through with my winter break, and I've been able to relax and celebrate the holidays with my family. I even was snowed in for a few days earlier in the week, giving me the perfect excuse to sleep and watch movies, a luxury much appreciated.

I also celebrated with friends with a small Christmas party, which included all the cliche activities...cookie swaps, secret santa exchanges, and all the classic movies. It was nice way to reunite with all my friends from home that I hadn't seen since Thanksgiving.

I'm still looking for to returning to school though; I should have a lot going on this semester. I will be applying for my first co-op position that I will be starting the spring semester of 2009, which means portfolio and resume preparations. I also will be applying for the study abroad program in Rome for the Fall of next year, an exciting part of the architecture program here at NU. And when I come back, my schedule allows for Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays to be nearly entirely free of classes (all the architecture classes are now on Tuesday/Thursdays for me), so I will be looking to find a part-time job somewhere, most likely off-campus. I also have my Honors seminar to look forward to. So far all my honor courses have been really interesting and exciting and I'm sure this will be no different. It's on a topic I have no real background in: the history of espionage, taught by Professor Burds. But I'm excited to take an elective that's different from anything I've taken at NU thus far; in the past I've focused on environmental science/studies courses.

One week in to the spring semester and it feels like I never left. Everything just picked up right where it left off. I even have the same professor for my history course (20th Century Architecture and Urbanism) as I did last semester; it's actually my third time in Professor Maulsby's class. It's nice in this type of course to build a rapport with a professor you like; it helps with understanding what is expected for tests, papers, etc.

In studio we are already nearly finished with our first assignment: an analysis of a given school, which is a precedent to the project of designing an urban school that we will be developing throughout various stages throughout the semester. So far the dynamics of my section (students and the professor alike) seems to be working really well, and I'm looking forward to a good semester.

I also got a work study job in the enrollment services office as a receptionist two days a week. It's a very quite office, and so far I don't many responsibilities, which allows me to keep up on readings for my courses.

I'm also really excited for next weekend. Four of friends from home are still on their winter break and are able to come up to visit. We will get to do all the 'tourist' activities throughout Boston; I just hope the the weather isn't too frigid!

The past couple weeks have flown by. I had friends come visit from UCONN, which was a lot of fun. They got to see all the fun parts of living in the city. We went to Quincy Market and Fanueil Hall for the day and had lunch; (they were all really excited to buy all the Boston-themed tourist memorabilia). We also were able to venture into the North End for a bit, despite the frigid cold, to show them that area.
I also am finishing up the second phase of my semester-long studio project of designing a school. We have our classroom module designs due Friday. This phase of the project had us focus on a single classroom unit and how the spaces and zones can be created with various material and structural applications, for instance, focuses on the thick wall and the separation of the spaces in section.
I also attended an information session for the study abroad program. I will be beginning the application process as soon as possible essentially, the deadline being February 10th. Exploring the website on the program at the La Magia Institute, I was excited to see how close to the center of Rome we will be studying, just a short walk from the Campidoglio and the Roman Forum.

(A google image of the housing along the river in Rome.)

For it being just a couple days after break, there's a lot going on. I was able use the week off to play catch-up with updating and finalizing my resume and portfolio. I sent those out to a couple firms close to home in New Haven in search for a summer internship, but the timing is not great. The market for any job in architecture is not promising at the moment, but I'm just looking to get any experience I can before I have to start applying for my January co-op next year.

Overall though, my break was pretty relaxing. I got to just be home with family and friends, somewhat away from the stresses of school, which was most definitely needed. I also get to look forward to friends from home coming to visit this weekend, so I'll be able to show them around the city (in much warmer weather than last time they visited). So that's something to look forward to to get me through my rather stressful week.

I have a presentation in my espionage seminar on the autobiography of Markus Wolf (known as the 'man without a face') who was East Germany's greatest spymaster for over thirty years. It was a really interesting topic that I had no real prior knowledge of. But I also had another 350 page book to read for that class, in addition to a 20th century history reading summary, studio work, and working on a structures project, so needless to say I didn't get to enjoy it to its fullest extent. The project for my structures course is producing the construction documents for a masonry wall (showing in section the foundation, masonry structure, window openings, floor joists, interior finishes, etc.) But this will also feature a green roof design, which helps to incorporate the course's focus on sustainability. We had a guest lecture on the design and construction of green roofs, and we also spent the last class period discussing the various components and their organization.

Coincidentally, the lecture on Monday for the School of Architecture's lecture series dealt a great deal with green roofs. Richard Cook, one of the architects working on the Bank of America building in Bryant Park. The lecture discussed the 'eco-skyscraper' in terms of sustainability, creating a comfortable and productive work space for employees, and how it addresses the streetscape and existing structure. He also introduced the sustainable project he and his firm just won for office buildings, which I believe will be on Congress St. in Boston. The submitted project for the competition looked particularly interesting in, not only that it had a series of expansive green roofs that covered the various building types, but also it's form is very different from the building's already making up Boston's skyline.

I'm aware that admitted students will now be making their decisions about which university they will be attending next year, so as always, feel free to ask any questions you may have!

Despite the fact that it's summer and I'm supposed to have more time to relax, my schedule's been exhausting. I've been working a summer job at Home Depot in the Garden Center up to forty hours a week, in addition to a summer internship that I got for a few days a week. I've been working at the firm Fletcher Thompson in their Shelton, CT office, making changes to construction drawings in CAD or fixing layouts and drawing scales. It's been a lot of tedious work, but I've learned a lot already in the couple weeks I've been there. And the exposure to the architecture office environment has been invaluable, as has the new addition to my resume when applying for my January co-op starting in the fall.

I'm going to be getting a break next weekend though. I'm really exciting to be going camping with friends from home and friends from Northeastern that I haven't seen since school got out. It will be a really fun break from work to be able to relax with all my friends for a couple days, especially those from Boston that I may not see for the rest of the summer.

Please feel free to post any questions or comments.