First Day of Classes

Now we get ourselves into the goodness of it all!

Class started at 8:30am sharp. Professor Meuschke comes in, and the first thing he says is, "I plan on keeping you here until the end of class, but I did not sleep at all last night... If I start to doze off, you can leave sooner."
Already he seems like a really nice guy and funny. He went around the room asking things about ourselves so we would become comfortable with him. Although, there should have been some icebreakers for the students... it was too quiet and every person was just staring at their cellphone.

At one point he asked, "Who of you can draw well?"
I and one other raised their hand, and luckily he picked the other guy.
"Can you draw this girl?" pointing to a girl to his left.
"Uhh... I guess."
"Ok. Draw her now. Now, who else in class can draw?"

Looking around and no one raising their hands, he starts mocking us with, "Oh, I don't want to raise my hand, I don't want to draw the other students."

It was great.

Occasionally he would ask what the time was, and would always be surprised to find out that the time was moving slower and slower with each time he asked.

10 o'clock finally comes and he gives us a break and... everyone whips out their phone in awkwardness. I went to search for a bathroom or a water fountain (since I'd left my bottle at the bus stop in Monsey), I couldn't find either so I went back to the classroom only to pass by the professor who smiled politely as I tried to keep a socially-acceptable amount of eye contact.
I'm not sure if winking was appropriate.

After the break he began to ask each of us about why we chose architecture or what our favorite architect/architecture was. I used the former question to shamelessly discuss my Sukkah project. Prof Meuschke was fine with it since it wasted time. He also found it interestingly coincidental that I and Jewish professor for another class both mentioned the number 24.
(See: http://architalmud.blogspot.com/2013/09/emunah-vpachad-faith-fear.html)
Other students had mentioned many interesting architectural structures. And the Time Warner building next door tended to be one of the bigger topics.
Toward the end of class, Prof Meuschke told us we'd be going to Central Park to start drawing. And so we did.


Out on the fields, there was a man playing a guitar and singing, many beautiful women tanning were out, and there we were sketching buildings and trees.
First was a line drawing, and then we needed to do the shapes themselves. It was a wonderful way to spend a class. I finished my work quickly--since I only brought a pen and therefore was limited in shading area--so I took a look around to see others works.
It's amazing how stellar all of these people are at drawing!
It feels good to be around other artists. Especially those that also want to succeed in the Architecture program.

After all was said and done, Prof Meuschke gave us two assignments due for next week:

1) Just using Line drawings, draw the back of an appliance.
2) Self portraits. With charcoal or pencil.

These would then be pinned up to the wall and critiqued.

Shana Tova, dear reader.

I'll post picture later.

~ArchiTalmud