TGIF!
It’s been raining on and off for the past couple of days, but today the sky was finally clear. And what did I see way up on the mountain peaks? Snow!
Unfortunately, I have no photos of the snow just yet. I was stuck inside a classroom all day, working on project stuff. We’re at the end of the first week of a two-week project, and it’s been pretty tough. This time I’m working by myself, and it’s a different experience. I prefer to work with people because I tend to solve problems by talking about them, but luckily we still have a venue for feedback in the form of in-class crits, and we’ve been helping each other brainstorm when needed.
This two-week sequence is called Applied Dreams, because we get outside companies to work with the school on certain projects. This year we’ve got two companies: Alcatel (mobile phones) and ClickAClip (MMS). There are two other project groups: a group designing installation proposals for the Future Center in Venice, and a group known as the calendar group.
I’m in the calendar group, which is really composed of two projects. One is to design a new calendaring system for the school. The other project is to create a “keyhole” viewer into the school, using the scheduling and events from the calendar as a jumping-off point. I am working on the keyhole project, as are two other individuals, and there are two three-person groups working on the calendar. There’s a certain amount of information architecture that I have to deal with on the exhibit, as well as concerns about furnishing content, but the main problem for me is figuring out how to make this installation. It’s something I haven’t dealt with before, and with the “physical computing” course the next four-week project we’re doing, I’m getting a little ahead of myself.
It’s definitely been a long week. I went to aperitivo this evening, and then to a pizza place for dinner because I have no food in my room and I haven’t had time during the week to run to the market or supermarket. Over dinner we were talking about how Monday seems like it was two years ago. It’s been a really short week, but at the same time it’s been an incredibly long week. Even the professors are showing signs of wear. Two weeks is a very short amount of time.
Last night I came home, made the last of my pasta for dinner, sat down on my couch to do some work, and the next thing I remember is waking up at 4AM. So I walked over to bed and went back to sleep. So much for just resting my eyes… But I felt much better today. We’ve had two presentations (almost three) in the past three days, so there’s been the normal preparation of work for the presentation, along with the work for the project itself. And I’m going to be busy this weekend too…
So, just for the record, I’m still enjoying it here; I’m just tired and there’s a lot of work. But it’s a good experience, and I’m learning a lot, and it’s really pushing me, and that’s just what I wanted. All the same, I’m going to enjoy having some time off over Christmas vacation!