Charlottesville, Va.

After a nice month long hiatus from studies, things are expected to begin picking up here. Last week I met with Bill Morrish and Phoebe Crisman to add them to my Nix team. Phoebe has a background in architecture and the urban environment, which is of great interest to me, and Bill's expertise is in infrastructural issues and the bigger picture. Both had extensive knowledge outside their field. Coupled with Ed Ford and Judy Kinnard, I should have enough input to keep this thing from ever crystalising. This week, that will be my main focus. Now that I am back and have more or less 8 essays and one long ass interview to compile, I will need to rework my thesis to be sure that readers have a clue what I'm trying to get across. Seeing as I don't even know just how I'm going to pull it off, it could be pretty demanding. I am, however, rather confident that despite turning my original proposal on its head, I'm still more or less ending up with a similar thesis, albeit a very different approach to the subject. I will come up with two theses: One sentence, which sums up the gist of my research in a handful of words, which is preferable during conversation about my research. The second will be a paragraph, in the neighborhood of 200 words, that captures with some level of detail just what I hope to ellicit from this research.

The second thing I would like to do is to make up a revisable schedule. I say revisable because my on the ground schedule was obsolete within 9 days, and I don't think this will be much different. Still, with studio, exams, papers, research, and the occasional free moment, and with a tentative final presentation circa mid-october, I will need something to keep me on track. Piggy-backing this research with my design research class ought to help, but to what extent, I'm not sure.

So stay tuned. I'll begin posting writings as they near completion and/or reflection points. Comments/critiques are most vividly welcomed in all cases.