No, not because of new course requirements, but because for whatever reason, teachers are now required to inform students of how much various assignments are worth. My question is...why? Why do we even get grades? I'm not complaining, because I get good grades. I just think it seems incredibly elementary school. They actually give out A+s here. Am I here to learn design or collect As? Shouldn't my portfolio be reward? Maybe if I get an A daddy will give me $1! We are all adults and have proven ourselves in undergrad. A+s? I almost find that more insulting. On this one assignment I got a 100%. Actually written on my assignment was 100%. I haven't gotten a 100% or A+ since like...10th grade. They didn't even have A+s at my undergrad. Maybe I can get a gold star too. Maybe I can move my computer into my studio instructor's office! For the #4 school according to DI, an A+ sure seems juvinile. What's next, a pat on the ass from my building skins instructor? Give me a break, an Ivy League school (for whatever that is worth) should not be handing out A+s. Worried about grade inflation? Just tell me if I passed or not. They give us grades, but don't calculate a GPA. LAME!

In other news:
Photography- The kid that ruined his film also ruined his entire box of print paper by opening it in his room so that he could just bring some of it to school...in a folder. This was revealed after the teacher asked if we had all read to which everyone said yes. Our teacher was then made aware that in fact my class is full of liars. But even if you didn't read, you obviously don't understand the basic principles of photography, like light and stuff.

High Performance Building Envelopes-Only 3 weeks left. Going along well thus far. We just design a skin in detail. Mine has some things in common with Winka Dubbeldam's Greenwich St. condos so I emailed her about the structure. Her response was:

all custom designed
mullions are welded s4
good luck
winka

Oh well. At least she responded, so that's cool. Most people just blow you off (even your own profs sometimes). She was at one of my mid-reviews once and was pretty good. Unfortunately she is only art time now and teaches the post professional studios, so I won't have the option to take her studio as far as I know.

Surfaces/Effects-Still enjoying that class. I'll post pictures of that project later. Right now it's very early so the photos look like crap. Although my partner and I are going to use Lumisty and we got a sweet 50% discount.

Studio-This annoying diagramming part is done tomorrow. I actually should be working right now, but I'm lazy. I'll do it. Then it should start getting more interesting. We all thought it was done yesterday so we stayed up finishing stuff and plotting. But nope...tomorrow. We met with a guy from facilities and learned a whole bunch of stuff about Penn's master plan. It was actually really interesting. Our critic wants us to have a very resolved building by spring break, located on the current Meyerson site. We will then make another building for finals somewhere else on campus. Should be interesting to see what happens. I have a couple of guys in my studio that are really good and fast. I'm sure they can do it, but me, not so sure haha.

Lectures-Some dude is lecturing right now about something somewhere downstairs. I have to do work study right now (another reason I'm not doing much work). But I probably wouldn't have gone. Most of our lectures are on Thursdays which sucks since I work on Thursday. although, I usually fall asleep at the lectures as these guys rattle off about algorythms or what have you. When I skip lectures they are good, when I go they suck. I might have to skip work to see David Adjaye speak next month. At the NLSO last semester I was privy to some terrible lectures. Some guy got up there and talked about how he looked at crystallography. Then he showed a building that looked like crystals. It was stupid. Then some guy talked about knots. I have no idea what his deal was. If you want to make a building that looks like a donut made out of pipe cleaners, then I guess you should talk to that guy. I couldn't take anymore after that and left. Apparently some woman got up and talked about crochet. The next day there was a guy with these sweet robots, but again, the architects rambled on trying to relate things that really didn't work. Finally some student asked "Ok, so you can do all this generative, morphogenetic stuff, but how does it work with program, space, material and the human component?" The speaker stared off in the distance for a while and answered..."I don't know. I've been trying to figure that out myself."