The first day of class is always an exciting one! As people trickle back in to the studio stories are shared of restful breaks. Amongst all the stories being swapped the mystery of studio is brought up. This semester opens with a competition! Four classmates, preselected into teams by the professors, are tasked with a week long design challenge which impacts a region of Philadelphia. I shall say no more of the competition but photos are soon to come of the team at work. Final submissions will be displayed Thursday, January 18th! Can’t wait to see all the work that can be done in such a tight time frame.

Welcome back to School!

With November came midterms and soon after midterms came an avalanche of pressing deadlines. As with every deadline, anyone outside the deadline has a million suggestions to allieviate the stress without considering any other part of life beyond the deadline. Below are a few suggestions:

• Work over Thanksgiving Break! Yikes, I know, not really anyones dream to be working over break. However, it really, really, really helps! Even if it is just reading and taking notes for a paper or puting renders in one after the other to get a base image, every little bit of work adds up.
• Sleep. Seems counter intuitive but if you are rested you are less likely to make mistakes meaning work gets done more efficiently.
• Take breaks. Short 10 minute breaks every hour or two to take a walk or chat with a neighbor can help break up all the stress of impending deadlines.

These lovely tips helped keep me on track, albeit still stressed but on track. Thanksgiving break took me on a trip across the pond with my family and my laptop (for work). Inspired and rested from the trip, December came and went with the resulting work leaving me a little surprised. I had achieved much more than I had planned in studio, in the area of digital development, and felt confident in the rest of my exams.

It is hard to chronicle an entire month or so of work in retrospect, in all the detail it was felt in at the time, so a few snapshots below should help to illustrate a little of the feeling of the time.