First post of the year!

Hello Everyone! Welcome back! Here is our first post for the school year:

Life of a Saluki Architecture Grad Student
Hello readers! My name is John G. Svast III and as you could tell by the title, I’m currently a
graduate student at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, Illinois (Home of the Salukis). I will be
treating this blog as my Star Wars-esque scrolling intro where I tell you a bit about myself and what this
adventurous blog will be about.
About the Dashingly Handsome Author

First off, I’m 33 years old and hail from a town called West Chicago. I’m a United States Air Force
Veteran and would like to give props to the Veterans Affairs Department here at SIU, they are amazing at what they do and are one of the best in the country. My Architecture education Started at the book
store in Ramstein Air Base in Germany when I purchased the book “Architecture for Dummies” and the
rest has been history. When I separated from the Air Force in 2004 I started taking classes at the College
of DuPage in Glenn Ellyn, IL and graduated from there in 2006. After graduating, I worked at a handful
of other architecture firms until 2010 and decided it was time to head back to school. I started my
undergraduate studies here at SIU in the summer of 2011 and have loved it. The area is absolutely
beautiful and the professors are willing to bend over backwards to give you one of the best educations
in architecture in Illinois (for a pretty good price I might add). SIU’s , meat n’ Potatoes are building
technology classes and you are really going to know how a building goes together and how to draw said
building by the time you are done here at SIU.

So What is This Blog All About?

Every few weeks or so, us graduate assistants are required by the SIU Architecture gods to offer
a blog sacrifice. It can be about anything as long as its architecture related SO!... with that in mind, I have chosen to blog what it’s like to be an Architecture Graduate Student here at SIU. It won’t be like
one of those crumby episodic TV shows where the hero saves the universe in a timely 45 minutes every
week. It will be a timeline of what it is like to be here. It will make you laugh, it will make you cry, and
maybe it will convince you to come to this fantastic school I call home.