stephanieNY

It was inevitable. I'm getting ready to leave and I'm feeling nostalgic for the city already. I'm going to miss a lot here. I went for a walk this morning in Central Park. Through the North Woods section of the park is a straight-up nature walk, complete with dirt paths, creeks, waterfalls and overgrown old stone bridges.  I may as well have been in New Hampshire.  Sure it's all man-made and massive blocks of buildings sit 300 yards away, but it's so nature-y and you really can't hear the city at all!  I can't believe I can walk 4 blocks from my apartment on Broadway and go bird watching in the woods!  No place else.  Well, I'm sure there are plenty of other places, but for right now, I'm gonna feel all sentimental and amorous about this place.

Tuesday night, the Empire State Building shone blue in honor of Columbia's 2010 graduates. I didn't take this picture, nor see it...but I felt it. (Thanks New York)   

As the fog in the picture shows, Tuesday was a wet rainy mess.  My graduation gown doubled as a poncho and half my guests sat out in a cold tent and watched the ceremony on a monitor. (Thanks Adam, Sarah, Matt and Lizzy)  

It's all felt pretty amazing to finish up.  I've been anticipating this moment for what feels like soooooo long.  It's also been a bit anticlimactic since, as usual, the end of the semester finished with little deadline after little deadline.  Even after graduation on Tuesday, I had to go up to school yesterday to pass in a final studio assignment.  

I think the moment where I can actually say that everything ended was my walk home from school yesterday.  It was so perfectly, poetically final as I carried with both hands an open-topped cardboard box with my personal belongings from my desk at school (like people do when they get fired).  I got in the elevator, hit the ground floor, and as the doors closed in front of me, all I was missing was a green plant peaking out from the box and a cameraman filming the moment from the other side so it could be replayed in slow-motion later.

I proceeded to go home and fall asleep on the couch to Barefoot Contessa......aaaaaaahhhhhhh.  

Pictures of everything that preceded, here.

I handed in my comprehensive, all-the-work-I've-done-at-Columbia-in-three-years portfolio today. Check out the blue cover strip with the little pocket slit.  It's my favorite part.

It's happening.  Graduation is next week.  I picked up my tickets to the ceremony and reception today.  Check out how cool they are.  Mine's the green one and my guests get the orange ones.  

And (nerd alert) check out how uncool caps and gowns are.  At least everyone else will be wearing them. 

As of Thursday, I was officially finished with my classes.  My final final was for my graphic design class, the best class I took all three years.  I had these two really great professors, both from 2x4, Inc.  It made me wish I had studied graphic design instead.  False alarm though.  I think this falls somewhere with my furniture design dreams.  I'm just really good at liking good graphic and furniture design, not really making either.  Here's Michael Rock standing with my final diagrams (in black on the wall).  

And here are my diagrams (inspiration for color palette and dots from AB):

I've been working on my portfolio for the past few days, which requires sifting through my hard drive of semesters of work. Some of it makes me cringe and some of it makes me laugh, and that which doesn't do either has a chance of making it in. This one made me laugh.  I made it at the beginning of my housing studio.  I like it.

Apparently, there was a chance that Roger Waters was going to be a critic on my final review tomorrow but cancelled. Apparently, he's trained as an architect and apparently my profs know him somehow. Apparently, he met some of his band mates in architecture school way back when. Now, all I can think about is how cool it would have been to say that Roger Waters came to my final review in architecture school, and I'm mad that I can't. So as consolation, I'm writing this post to say that Roger Waters was almost a critic on my final review. Hmph.

Check it out.  I have a doppelganger scale figure!  I found this girl online a few years ago and have been using her in all my renderings for studio.  I just realized last semester that she looks exactly like me.  It's not everyday that I see my own profile, but I'm pretty sure it looks like this.  Zoom in to see what I mean.

(btw...I think she has a bow around her neck, not a knife sticking out of it.)

Things that I have anxiety over right now:

- My studio review on Wednesday
- Finding someone to take my apartment June 1st
- Getting a job so that I can pay my rent this summer if I can't find said someone

Things that I don't have anxiety over right now:

- Being stuck inside on a nice spring day.