Today I completed and turned in my last studio project. Though my last exam is not until Wednesday, I experienced the true pain and horror of design finals last week. Two days ago I turned in my design drawing process book, yesterday I turned in my space studio work, and today I turned in a portfolio of the work completed this year. The portfolio is a pdf created in InDesign, and it turned out quite lovely. Considering, however, that my technological incompetence turns the posting of pictures into a complex debacle- even with blogger’s super user-friendly setup- an attempt to post a pdf would result in the spontaneous combustion of my head. We don’t want that. Rather, I plan to bombard you with massive amounts of pictures.

This school year has been like nothing I’ve ever experienced: a dream-like blur of stress and expectation that consumed me so wholly, so completely, that I only now feel as if I’ve returned to the world I knew before. Perhaps I’m being a bit dramatic; foundations studies, though challenging weed-out classes, are nothing, nothing, compared to program work. My life, however, has changed because of it. Not only have the components of my life shifted, but I have stumbled upon a sense of specified purpose that I am moving towards at break-neck speed. This time next year I will be returning from a co-op in a design firm. The summer I start on Wednesday will be my last; after this year the breaks between quarters will be two weeks long at most. Come September I will begin my industrial design classes, and in the blink of an eye I will be facing graduation.

I’ve been dreading summer. I’m worried that I’ll have nothing to do. I’m also worried that I will burn out of the restaurant industry much sooner than I am allowed to. Waiting tables is my bread and butter for the next 4 years, yet I’m already sick of it. I absolutely loathe it.

I have fun travel plans for this summer, however. Rob will be marrying his delightful fiance Jasmin on July 7th, and I will be traveling to Salt Lake to attend the wedding, and in September Bryan and I will spend 5 days in Paris. Until then I will be working, sleeping in, dressing up, going out, and saying goodbye to the summers of my youth. This is, after all, the last one.