Back to the Ole Grindstone

By Zachary Collins

Welcome back everyone. I hope you all had a good break. I feel like the month off flew by! I was definitely busy most of break. I was still working at my part-time job at SIH, was best man at my cousin’s wedding, had multiple Christmases, and spent 5 days in Chicago for New Years –that last one was more of a vacation, than being busy. It was my second time in Chicago in my life, the first being a day trip for a class in high school. This time, it was a lot better. I was able to see downtown where I visited Millennium Park, the Bean, Marilyn Monroe’s statue, and I had my first “real” Chicago-style hot dog-it was delicious. I also attended a New Year’s Eve banquet with a friend. It was the first time I ever attended such an event, and it was amazing.

But enough about my break, as of right now the architecture graduate students have a big semester coming up. I will say that I am definitely not ready for this semester to begin. In one aspect, this semester will be easier because we have a lot less “class” time. I will only be in class 2 days a week. But on the other side of the spectrum, I won’t have much free time. As graduate students, we are expected to work on our Thesis project on our own time. I for one will have to really schedule my time accordingly. I had planned on working on it during break, but with my schedule I didn’t have the free time I thought I would have, and when I did, I really didn’t want to do school work. So I accomplished nothing thesis-related over break. But that’s fine, that’s what we are to do all spring semester.

I am really excited about my thesis; a hotel/casino high rise in Las Vegas. That project “name” is definitely just the tip of the iceberg. Once I brainstorm more about my thesis, the program itself will develop into more than just a hotel/casino. There will be more discussion on that once I return from Las Vegas. I am heading out there on January 26th and will be there for 4 days. I will be doing my site analysis and conducting “people” research. I will be logging my experiences in a journal the whole time as well as taking extensive notes on how people interact, react, and engage spaces in this city.

My next blog will be about my adventures in Las Vegas so be looking forward to that next time. I’m hoping to learn a lot with the personal experience of being there, and I can only speculate, but I believe I will have some interesting stories to tell once I’m back.