By Tyler Dunahee
It’s an interesting phenomenon, as the semester
rolls on and the weeks fly by, my interest in the graduate design studio starts
to fall as I look forward to jumping into my thesis project at the beginning of
the spring semester. Staying focused on
the task at hand can be hard to do at times, but not doing so can be dangerous
as well. It’s an easy thing to do and
can be done for a number of reasons. For
example, many great sports teams have lost to lesser teams, many times because
their next game was against a rival or another great team.
Anyway, preliminary thesis work progresses, posters
to drum up interest in each of our topics, asking faculty members and
professionals in our particular field of study to help further our learning and
depth/quality of our thesis. For those
of you who are not aware, I’m doing a revitalization project for my hometown of
Centralia, Illinois (located about an hour north of Carbondale). Centralia is a pretty good representation of
the typical southern Illinois town, close-knit, fairly sizable, surrounded by
farmland on the cities outlying areas.
In recent years, Centralia has been on a pretty steady decline, rising
unemployment rates, declining population, and more and more vacancies in the
downtown area.
When I decided that I wanted to a revitalization
project for Centralia, I decided to share my project and gather ideas by
posting in two Facebook groups, “Save Centralia” and “You Know You’re From
Centralia When….”. These two groups have
2,591 and 3,825 members respectively, so I felt it was a good way to get my
project out there as well as an open forum to gather ideas. What I gained was
much more than I could have ever imagined.
Three people, in particular, made an extra effort to offer their
expertise, advice, and help. The first
to reach out was a woman who serves on three boards for the City of Centralia,
the Centralia Tourism Committee, Housing Task Force, and the Centralia Image
Committee. Second, a small business
owner who operates in the downtown area reached out, providing me with even
more history of the immediate area as well as his vision of what the area could
become. And last, a gentleman whose past
titles include City Planning and Development Director for the City of Centralia
as well as holding the same position in Carbondale over the course of 38 years
in the two cities. He actually agreed to
be on my thesis committee, and his insight in city planning and development as
well as his knowledge of the city of Centralia will be instrumental in
development of a great thesis.
My recommendation to those of you that are going to
pursue a March, choose a thesis topic that you’re passionate about. You’re going to be working on it for nearly a
year, do not choose something that you’re going to get burnt out on halfway
through. It’ll spell disaster for thesis. Pick something early that you’re
passionate about and keep yourself plugging along on it.
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