I worked 24 hours straight on my design project with my group partner. Here's a little recap of how it went.

We met at the uni labs at 1pm and decided that we would have to make physical models of our ideas because they were too abstract for us to figure out on a computer. So we drove to Eckersley to get some foam core and then we headed over to Lincraft to pick up some stretch fabrics that could emulate the work of Ernesto Neto's flexible structures.

My group partner lives rather close to uni so we decided to just work at hers. She began the graphic presentation and I started experimenting with model making. My dinner was my crust-free chicken sandwich with jatz crackers + flat white.

Cooking quinoa again and damn, the skins that peel off from the seeds look interesting but also disturbing.

Here's what I've done. I've entered myself in a 9km run across the Sydney Harbour Bridge on Sunday September 21st at 9am. It's nearly a month away and I've been training for the past few months, but the progress has been quite slow. Since the start of the year I decided to push myself more, and focused more on my fitness.  So come September time, I can deliver the goods. Even if I don't run all the way, it will be an accomplishment in itself and personal goal just to complete the course.

I'm running with a friend and we're in a small group. I've decided my proceeds will go to Headspace, just because I think its important for young people to develop a strong mental health. It affects you in every way. The reason I got into a health kick was to overcome some things at the back of my mind. Last year I went hiking in Seoul, I never thought I could do it. But once you get to the top, all your worries just disappear.

Sandra

There's this temporary installation (which I think is no longer there) of hundreds of egg shells at my faculty building and every day the number of egg shells would disappear. Thought it was an interesting use of gallery space. It stopped lots of people outside to come in and see and take photos.

2 days to go till our first brief is due. Group work is hard to manage. It's only a group of 2 but the girl I'm working with doesn't seem to like working alongside someone and admits she gets more work done alone, which totally defeats the purpose of a group assessment if our ideas aren't linear. It doesn't help that I have work tonight. I've decided to de-stress by blogging but find myself only talking about the presentation? I even had an awful dream about Monday's presentation going all wrong before being woken up by my 6:30am alarm, only to snooze away into another dream state where my group partner and I were working alongside enthusiastically.

Hoping the next 2 days go smoothly.

Alyssa.

Early Hours

It was very early before but now its 9:19am. I was up at 5:45am this morning and decide to take some photos of the apartment JUST for this blog, so somebody better be reading this. Yes you Jenny. 

I had a shot of our balcony with lights at 5am but I couldn't make it fit into this compilation so you'll have to wait for another post maybe.

I think only Alyssa's seen the apartment in full. When Jenny and Sandra first came over we didn't have much because we clearly blew our baby bonus money on the TV and couch. When in Bankstown.

Need to put more work into our bedroom, it's pretty boring at the moment, apart from the new desk. Somewhere down the track hopefully we'll buy some artwork to jazz the place up. 

We've stop furnishing the place because we're simply too poor now, just waiting for that next government hand-out, plus we need to start saving for the holiday in December. 

Diem.

I'm looking at Rebecca Mock illustrations and listening to Arvo Part's Spiegel im Spiegel. I've decided I'm going to watch all the films that feature this piece.

Alyssa.

I have learnt how to keep track of grocery specials. Yeah!

Went to Regina's house and hung out with a mutual friend. Regina's mum cooked us deep fried tempeh.

It's back to uni time for me and another stressful semester of balancing work and uni, sleep and a social life.

First week back, they gathered first years through to fourth years in one great lecture theatre for a motivational and inspiring "chat"(our program Director liked to call it, but it was just a lecture) about the years to come. Our program director talked about how failure didn't represent your overall success in life and that some of your best work is not in your first, second or third but your fourth year so don't stress. He addressed student concerns about employment and admitted that we may not all graduate as designers but stem into other positions in the built environment field. He also addressed the "great conundrum of architecture students" -  having no life - and said that they've compressed and changed the course over the years so that the workload and the time you spend on projects is not wasted energy. He basically said that 4 years of giving up your life is nothing compared to what you will be achieving. So yes, no life if you want to do extremely well.

Then we had another one hour lecture with our year lecturer who I've never had before. She's really nice and passionate about teaching and not biased towards certain styles of architecture (she loves all kinds from minimal to grandeur). She sounds a little OCD to be honest. The workload that she's set out is a little extreme - 25 hours of research a week, a pitch to our "client" aka tutors each week, and 2 fast-paced briefs over 4 weeks. That's a brief given and due every 2 weeks.

I'm scared. I'm nervous. I've done this before yet I'm not used to it. I don't think I'll ever get used to it.

I like finding quotes from architecture students because I feel less isolated when I'm experiencing a mental breakdown.

Let's try not to get into them in the first place, I guess.