Monday, June 4, 2012

Four more days...

Four more days until my classes at Vic are officially over for the semester!  I did not have any classes today because it is the Queen's birthday.  Haha...it feels so weird to be saying that..."the Queen's birthday."  It seems like only people who know her personally would talk about stuff like that, and not little ol' me from Independence, Missouri.  Anyhow, I spent my day off working on some school stuff and watching tv shows on my laptop.  It was quite relaxing actually.  I finished my final studio project and prepared myself for my presentation on Thursday, and now I have the rest of the time to just breathe and wait for the week to come to an end.  I am pretty nervous about this presentation, and I am usually not like this...at least not this nervous...scared even.  I have two presentations this week at Te Aro -- one for my Colour, Pattern, and Light class and then studio.  Tomorrow I will present for CPL in front of my professor and a guest critic.  It shouldn't be too bad since reviews for that class are usually pretty informal.  And all I have to do is explain a few pretty pictures I made!  Sounds easy enough, eh?  Thursday I believe there will be two guest critics, my professor, and tutor...so perhaps that's why my nerves are a little high this time around.

This past week was quite interesting in studio...ha!  To say the least.  I don't even think I should say, but talking about it makes me all giddy inside, so I'm just going to tell you.  I got in my first ever tit for tat with a studio professor!  I've never gotten so frustrated with a professor before that I've actually shown it...I mean I normally just say ok, sure, I understand, I'll fix it.  But this time she was just completely out of line.  Ok ok, so there was no actual yelling involved or throwing of paper around...I did make some pretty big gestures with my arms and probably couldn't control my facial expressions.  Other than that, it was a rather mild tit for tat...but for me to speak up like that is HUGE!

So this was the first step she crossed.  She asked me (in her French accent), "Why do you use planters, why not just put the plants straight into the ground?"  I replied, "The site is originally a parking lot, the soil is going to be very compacted and it will be hard for plants to grow in those conditions."  She replied, "Just uncompact it."  And I just laughed...later, after speaking with Ben he confirmed that uncompacting is a bit more complicated than my professor was letting off...that the soil would undoubtedly be contaminated as well as compacted.  In short, my professor thinks design is all unicorns and rainbows.

This was the next step crossed.  I told my professor that there is a nice view out to the hills if you're standing on the site looking north...and so I wanted to frame this view by angling the building facade and not block that side with very many tall plants.  She said, "I don't buy the view."  WTF?!?  What does that mean?  I said, "Ummm....ok...but the view is there, I'll show you a picture."  O.M.G.

This was the final straw.  Tim the tutor called my design concept "generic."  Basically that it was not "site-specific."  I threw my hands up and said, "W-w-wait...I did NOT just haphazardly draw lines on the paper!"  I then went on to explain why I drew each line.  Every line.  In a frustrated tone I'm sure...at this point I was up to my eyeballs in anger.  Tim withdrew and said, "Ok ok, the design works, maybe you just weren't explaining it right...maybe it's your rhetoric (which he pronounces this with an emphasis on the second syllable)."

That's another thing, what's up with design people here saying "orien-TATE-ed?!?"  If I hear oriented pronounced that way one more time...and "bollARD."  The accent is on the first syllable, not the second!

Okay, that was my vent session.  I might end up removing this post after I've fully gotten over that whole episode.

On a brighter side, I go on my ten-day South Island tour starting next Sunday!  I leave Wellington from the Interislander Ferry Terminal and take a ferry to Picton.  I will stay overnight one night and from there, my Stray bus will pick me up to start the tour!  I will be traveling all along the west coast, down to Queenstown, back up to Christchurch, and then fly back to Wellington.  In total I will be seeing eight different towns on the South Island, so many landscapes, mountains, glaciers, lakes, and ocean!  I am very excited to get out of Wellington for a while and see the other half of the country.  It will be very cold...I've heard that Queenstown already has snowcapped mountains.  I've even started packing my backpacking backpack for the trip...clothes for layering and food.  Lots of food...I don't want to have to spend a fortune on eating out.  Plus, I plan on sailing at Abel Tasman, glacier hiking at Franz Josef (if they've opened it back up), and possibly horseback riding through the mountains in Rangitata.

Just let me survive this week.  Please.