Inside Summer College 2009

Ben	Geetsikha
Ian	Jason
Jeremy	Mary
Trey

Inside Summer College 2008

Ashley	Ben
Drue	Elizabeth
Josh	Kaitlin
Kristin	Laura
Maia	Paige
Ruben

Inside Summer College 2007

Andrea	Brian
Brooke	Casey
Charleen	Dave
Erica	Farah
Hayley	Koyuki
Katie	Rachelle
Tyrone

Inside Summer College 2006

Lia	Erik
Hannah	Zaid
EJ	Jordana

see also

• Slide show
• Summer College campus photo tour
• Summer College videos
• The Summer Times Student Newspaper

Ben

Hey y’all, my name is Ben and I live in Houston, Texas with my family. I have two sisters, who have both graduated college and live on their own, and one who is expecting a baby in the coming weeks (I can’t wait to be an uncle!). I go to The Kinkaid School, a private school in Houston, and just finished my junior year (finally!) and am looking forward to the coming senior year. I am a pretty good student, though I wouldn’t call myself a bookworm, but I participate in as much art as I can around the school and am the president of my school’s art club. I am captain of the varsity volleyball team and also play for a Houston club team. Kinkaid isn’t the best team in the league (yet), and most of my teammates are pretty new to volleyball, but we have fun and we’re looking forward to next season! The transition from Houston to Ithaca is going to be a major change for the next six weeks, but the upstate New York weather, I’m sure, will be much more hospitable than the Texas heat (and Houston humidity).

I am starting the six week Introduction to Architecture course at Cornell Summer College next week and I am very excited. Architecture has been a passion of mine since I can remember, and after taking a summer course at the University of Texas in Austin and taking my school’s architecture course this last year, I am ready for the new experiences that the Cornell program will offer. Cornell is my top choice for college, and this course, among other things, is a way for me to get to know Cornell better and really decide if it’s the place for me. When I visited Cornell last January, our guide told us he thoroughly believed that the architecture students at Cornell worked the most out of anyone at the school, and I can believe it. Coming into the course, I expect I am going to be busy and tired and have no time to do anything other than architecture (not that that’s all bad) but am looking forward to befriending my fellow course mates and finding time in there every so often to explore the Cornell campus and Ithaca. I can’t wait until I’m up in Ithaca next week, and starting the course and meeting new people!

Journal entries

6/27/09
I can’t believe it’s only been one week, it’s felt like a month. I got to Ithaca the night before check in, and stayed with my father in town. Check in was a flurry of unpacking and catching ceremonies and meetings, but after all the parents left, I finally started to feel like Summer College had begun. I am in a triple with my two roommates: Winston, who is from Philadelphia, and Mark, who is from Oahu, Hawaii. The diversity of the student body is crazy. I’ve met people from Hong Kong, Korea, France, Lebanon, Puerto Rico and the list goes on and on. My room is huge, compared to most dorm rooms, and me and my roommates are constantly reminded of how lucky we are by people that visit. The first two days were pretty relaxing, with no actual classes, just one lecture. My roommates and some of our new acquaintances, which we met at various events and at Appel Commons, spent our precious free days exploring Cornell and Collegetown and getting ready for our classes.

The first day of lecture was pretty exciting; it was like actually being in college, and we actually do have kids in college in our course. The lectures in the morning are interesting and have proven to keep me awake, even with the smallest amount of sleep. We have analyzed the function and need of chairs, talked about various ideas of design and functionality and learned about architects and styles. After lecture in the morning, we go to our studio classes in Rand Hall which is a small factory-looking building literally across the street from our dorms. Most of our time is, and will be spent in Rand, working on the projects that we have to finish in very, very small increments of time. This first week of studio has focused on the idea of space in a cube and we have constructed at least 10 cubes respectively, in a range of forms. The other Summer College students call Rand Hall “the cave” because architecture students go in, and seem to never come back out, but truthfully, we all love it, and we’re all becoming great friends among our cardboard scraps and X-Acto knives. We only leave when either we are forced by curfew, or to eat, and, very rarely, if we finish a project early. After an entire week of little sleep and dreaming of cardboard, finally the weekend came.

Friday night I went with my roommates and some of our friends to the Ithaca mall and saw a movie and then to this great little sushi place in Collegetown, which I will be going back to regularly. Saturday we started the day off by visiting the local farmers market which was awesome! There was fresh food and drinks, handmade goods and live music, and the weather turned out to be great. The rest of the day we relaxed in the sun and threw around a Frisbee. We were literally locked out of the studio, because if they hadn’t locked it, we probably would never have come out. I am very excited for my second week here at Cornell and am anticipating new projects, interesting lectures, meeting new people and exploring more of the campus.

7/6/09
It’s hard to believe it has only been two weeks here at Cornell, but I feel like I’ve been here for a lot longer. Everyone is just sort of getting used to the atmosphere and our work, as though this is how it has been for a while. I’ve been asked for directions a couple of times which surprised me because I didn’t think I really looked like a legitimate college student.

In Architecture this week, we started by finishing off our cube designs, and finally perfecting them by Tuesday night. The next day we went straight into drawing and drafting, starting with a morning drawing class and then beginning our first drafting project which was to draw elevations of our cube. The last few days of the week we improved on our drafting skills and then got our two large projects for the, so called by our professor, “unnecessarily lengthy” three day Fourth of July weekend. We had to make final drafts of our cube, and then each of us was given an object for which we had to draft a 1 to1 copy of every side, section and crevice of. It was tedious, and took my entire Sunday but turned out to be pretty interesting.

The weekend was full of planned activities and random trips into town and to the mall. Thursday night my I went over to Libe slope for the fireworks display, but the best part of the show, I thought, was the bell concert before the display. I hear the bells play songs every day and I’m always surprised at the complexity of the songs played, and sometimes how modern some of the songs tend to be. I try to hang out by the tower after lecture to hear a song every so often. Friday I worked in the studio for a few hours to finish off one of my projects, but then a couple of my friends and I grabbed dinner at Appel and then went to the dance in the Donlon dorms, it was pretty fun and the music ended up being better than I expected. Saturday I went to the carnival in the afternoon comprised of moon bounces, obstacle courses and sumo wrestling. That night I caught a movie at the mall, and then ended the night by watching fireworks displays all around Ithaca on Libe Slope. Sunday was completely used as a work day, so from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. I worked at the studio to finish my second project and take photos of all the projects I had done so far.

I still have four weeks left here at Cornell, but there’s so much more that I want to experience. I need to climb McGraw Tower, go to the Cornell Dairy, explore the plantations and hopefully go to Lake Cayuga at some point. Architecture is starting to speed up, and we’re having a mid term this Friday, but we’re all looking forward to getting more complex projects soon.

7/13/09
We’re halfway there! I’ve been at Cornell for almost a month with heaps of work and lecture and exploring, and I’m basically about to do it again, which is exciting. It has been very cold for most of the past week, which is surprising to me, but all the northeasterners say this is “warm.”

This week my architecture lecture class was really interesting. We had two guest lecturers, one who spoke about simple structure, and the other who spoke about architecture competitions. The lecture on architecture competitions was especially interesting to me. Our lecturer went through the history of the architectural competition, from early ones in Italy to modern ones that he himself competed in. He was very learned, interesting and humorously biased on certain designs and architects. In studio we completed our box projects (finally!) and continued our object drafts. After completing our final object drafts, we were then told to draw the movement the object would take when used. It is proving to be a very abstract project prompt, and with our finals due tomorrow, no one’s completely sure they have grasped the main idea of the project, but it has been fun to have a little more artistic freedom in our drafting projects, finally.

Sadly, as this is the third week I’ve been here, all the first three week programs ended and all of my friends from those programs had to leave. I was surprised how many people I knew in the three week programs, but meeting people here is really easy. The next day though, all our three week friends were replaced with the next shift of Summer College students. Having to be in the architecture studio during most of my free time I haven’t met many new kids, but so far I’ve met people from New York to Belgium to Shanghai. The diversity here is undeniable. Other than working in the studio this past weekend, my friends and I explored downtown Ithaca, walked around the campus and Collegetown and just got away from our hectic schedules for as long as we possibly could. I had a chance to go to the Cornell Dairy Bar this week, and all I can say is I will be going back. The ice cream was so fresh and the flavors went from the normal chocolate and vanilla to some oddballs like yam flavored ice cream. Hopefully sometime in the next three weeks I will find time to go to the clock tower, swim in Cayuga Lake, and I’d also like to explore the Johnson Art Museum a little more; there is some great artwork in there and the view is amazing. My biggest hope for the next week, though, is that we progress in architecture to some more complex projects and maybe even structures.

7/20/09
It’s been a busy week here, to say the least. Architecture is really getting serious and our projects are getting more meticulous with smaller deadlines. The weather has been extraordinarily nice this week, sunny but still cool and windy and I’ve been outside as much as possible with my tight schedule.

Our lectures this week have been particularly interesting from my perspective. We had guest lecturers talk to us about preservation and historical buildings and also about how and why we keep historical buildings and what they mean to us, with an emphasis on spiritual structures. The other lectures focused on the life of a working architect and the history of architectural model making and how and if it is important to the trade of architecture. Despite my lack of sleep I was wide awake through all of the talks and stayed later multiple times to ask questions with the lecturers who are all professors or administrators at Cornell and other schools abroad. Studio is getting increasingly difficult but I’m enjoying it more, and my studio mates and I are really beginning to bond over the sense of frenzy that comes with studio life. I’m am basically in studio all the time, except to eat and maybe go play a quick game of volleyball on the sand courts by my dorm.

I’m closing in on the last third of my stay at Cornell, and I just want it to continue! There’s so much still to experience and I hope I still I have time to do so. I am determined to climb the clock tower during a concert, go to Cayuga Lake and go to the Dairy Bar one more time. I’m starting to meet more three weekers, but oddly enough I’ve seemed to meet more six weekers than new students in the last week. I’m running back to Rand Hall to finish my projects for Monday’s studio, after writing this, to see what new large project awaits me and my classmates. Hopefully they aren’t too complex!

7/27/09
This was the last week of our lectures in the morning, which was pretty sad. This week we had talks on architecture and memory, how architecture can deal with, cause, and affect memories and also had a pretty comprehensive lecture on landscape architecture. The week was pretty thin with lectures because we took a field trip to a local architecture firm in Ithaca and were able to see how an actual office works and what everyone does. The firm did mostly college buildings around the area but it was really interesting and not surprisingly there were a lot of Cornell architecture students working there.

Studio work is piling up every day. I have probably made upwards of twenty models this week, and I just have to keep working because every day we get another assignment. The Cornell store is quickly running out of supplies; it’s a race to get there first and try to get cardboard and chipboard before it runs out. Unfortunately I was a straggler one day and I had to get creative with my materials, but it turned out all right in the end because my project stood out from the rest. Our project for this weekend was huge with two large scale models and drawings and I still haven’t completely finished.

This weekend was mostly spent in the Studio but Friday night I was able to get out and do something around campus. A couple of friends and I went to Helen Newman Hall and bowled, but then we went outside and saw that the sky had finally cleared which meant that the observatory was finally open. It was really dark and we ended up getting a little lost by Beebe Lake but we finally found it up on a hill behind Appel. The building was amazing. That night they were viewing Jupiter and four of her moons and Neptune and we got to be in the old dome as it turned, the mechanics of it were amazing. We stayed there for almost 2 hours learning about constellations and viewing planets and stars. It’s definitely something I would do again. The rest of the weekend was spent in the studio making various models, but I’m almost finished and ready for my critique this afternoon.

8/3/09
It’s over! I can hardly believe it. The last week went ridiculously quick and I’m sad to leave Ithaca but I am really missing Houston and am ready to see everyone. Studio ended with a rush of projects to finish. Our final critiques were very thorough and very interesting. There was a panel of about 10 different people that critiqued and complimented various facets of all the work we completed. It felt like real architecture school. After the final hill of the critiques we were finally done and we ran out and celebrated.

The last few days were spent cleaning and documenting our past projects and it all was pretty somber because we all knew it was almost over. I had so little work I had no idea what to do with myself. I finished cleaning and documenting before dinner and then me and my architecture friends just roamed around campus searching for something to do. We even contemplated, more than once, going back to the studio and making random things out of scrap board. In the end I finally was able to go up the clock tower, (finally!) and the bell player was taking requests so we requested happy birthday for one of our friends that had turned 18. The bells were louder than I could have ever expected, but the views were spectacular.

Our gallery opening on the last day of camp was full of parents, crying friends and packing quickly. In the flurry of it all I didn’t really have time to feel sad about leaving Cornell after six long weeks of work but thinking more and more about it I’m pretty sad that it is over. I could almost do it all over again. My friends from the camp were from all over the worked but we all vowed to each other to meet again at some point, somewhere and I hope it all works out.

8/24/09
Since leaving Cornell it has been absolutely crazy at home. It’s still hard to believe I’m home and I no longer have to make time to go to Appel or stress over the latest architecture project. Although getting ready for school and college apps have been strenuous, and will continue to be, I feel less stressed than I have before because of my experiences at Cornell. The architecture course taught me how to deal with loads of work while having to get enough rest and stay moderately good spirited for our routine critiques with professors. It has taught me a lot about myself and how much work I really can take on, and I go into my senior year ready for any challenge that waits. This program also answered a lot of my questions about Cornell and college in general and I am even more excited than I was before for college next year. Cornell was one of my top choices and now I’m thinking it’s my first. The classes were interesting and challenging and our professors and critics were absolutely great. The school was amazing in every aspect, and although I didn’t think I would like living in a small town, Ithaca is a diamond in the rough. I miss going to Collegetown in the morning for bagels, I miss weekend trips to downtown, and, most of all, I miss everyone that I met at Cornell. I met people from every corner of the world and I keep up with almost all of them daily (we’re hoping to have a reunion at some point). This program gives you a unique opportunity to meet people that you never would have met, with different views ideas and personalities and I am glad to have met the people I did. I hope to come back to Cornell in a year, and I embrace the possibility of it. Once I left Cornell, I just wanted to go back.