img-overview-01I’ve complained (at length) about my graduate classes this semester.  Realistically, my class titled Advanced Materials was mentally challenging, but didn’t consume too much of my time.  Each week, I could count on a difficult-to-follow, but highly-informative lecture.  The exams were a good mix of concepts and applied theory.  The other class, Facilities Planning, was the exact opposite.  The concepts were easy to grasp but the time spent on the course was insane.  The class was cross-listed with an undergraduate class.  So, for some strange reason, the professor felt the need to assign tons of busy work.  The final exam was ridiculous, as well.  Time-intensive problems that are wrought with opportunities for small errors that can greatly affect the outcome of solutions.  YAY!

In the Facilities Planning course, we had a final project to put into practice the concepts that we had learned.  When I say “learned”, I mean things that we did over-and-over in homework.  I suppose teaching the concepts would have been too much to ask of the professor, so repetition seemed to be his method of instruction.  At any rate, we were supposed to design a facility.  Here are a few of the images that I created to illustrate the building that I designed/planned.  Click ‘em if you want to big ‘em.

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I will be the first to admit that I’m not an architect.  There were a lot of things that I did not consider in my facility, and I knew that when I was putting together the final report and presentation.  I knew that the professor was going to find these details and dock my grade heavily for it.  And then, I sat through some of the other presentations.  Magically, I began to feel really about my work.  This is one of the graphics from the a group of undergrads:

Yeah, I think I spent too much time on my project.