My Story

By: Michael Young

For my first blog I wanted to give you a brief introduction of who I am and how I got to the point I’m at now. My name is Michael Young and I am a graduate student in the Architecture program here at Southern Illinois University - Carbondale. I was born and raised in Springfield, IL where I attended Lincoln Land Community College. Receiving my Associate degree in Arts. When it came time to transfer, to obtain my Bachelor degree, it was a pretty clear decision for me. My Uncle, being an Architect, spoke very highly of past students coming from the program at SIU. I began doing research on the school and found nothing but good things. One thing that stood out to me was how technical of a school SIU was. Not only do they focus on the overall design of a project but they also provide a strong basis of how a building goes together. I graduated with my Bachelor degree in Applied Sciences in Architectural Studies from SIU in 2014. It was always my goal to pursue a Masters Degree after completing my undergrad. I applied to the Masters program at SIU and was offered a Graduate Assistantship. It was an honor to be accepted. I am currently in my second semester of the graduate program and plan to graduate summer of 2015. For our design studio, I have Professor McDonald. Our present project is The Olympic Legacy design in Rio, Brazil. Our site is approximately 150,000 square meters in Barra de Tijuca. We are designing a legacy master plan of our site. We just returned from a field trip to Atlanta, Georgia to experience and tour the 1996 Olympic site and the Olympic Centennial Park. It was interesting to see how the Olympic areas were utilized 18 years later.

The question I feel like I always get asked is, “Why did you choose architecture.” I think it is interesting to hear other people stories on why they choose architecture. My inspiration came to me as a kid; I loved playing the Sims computer game but only for the reason of building houses. I would use the money cheat code and design huge mansions. I found it very fascinating to create whole neighborhoods. Through middle school and high school I took some architecture classes to see how I liked it. From then on I knew exactly what career path I wanted to choose and I haven’t looked back since!