Now I’m Doing Something With My Time
It’s like being punched in the stomach.
First, endless weeks of being entirely responsible for my own time. Maybe interacting a person or two every day. Making every meal from scratch. Gorging on books, devouring good series. The most stress came from part-catering a bridal shower for two-score people, and the most excitement came from running around Cape Cod with Thomas, Mary, Judith, and Steve. Only the occasional RISD email or a day-trip to Providence reminded me that all this doing-nothing time was enjoyed in anticipation of important doing-something time.
I just had no idea how intense that doing-something time was going to be.
Welcome to RISD. Already, three weeks into the summer program, I feel like I’ve been here for months, if not years. I’ve gotten used to 9-9 days, plus a few nights staying up to witching hour to finish a “site plan, perspectives, and a model” given 18 hours before the due date. I’ve been driven to tears and I’ve held my classmates when they felt too like giving up, all of us soldiers in a war of paper and graphite. Together we’ve covered plant identification, river morphology, soil geology, site surveying, orthographic projection, isometric and perspective drawing, plaster-casting, charcoal sketching, woodworking, and canoeing. All this in the face of having to do it for three. full. years.
Yet whenever I have a spare hour… what can I do that is more fulfilling and creative than this? What socializing is more satisfying than working through difficult problems with a bunch of highly talented folks from every age and background? What is more relaxing than a waking up from two hours of sleep and a dinner of chocolate with a fuzzy-headed morning run? (Well… maybe not that last one.) The admissions office has placed a mantel on our shoulders that is intimidating and comforting at the same time. They’ve chosen us twenty-five to succeed at one of the top landscape architecture programs in the country, and though that is one big vote of confidence, we still have to live up to it.
I have a couple rules. Health has to be of equal importance to any work I have, because otherwise I’ll get sick and feel miserable and I won’t make it. That means making time for sleeping and running and nutritious food-eating. Next, I should be invested in my work. It should be awesome, because if I’m just doing it to get it done, I will resent my creations and they will become colorless crumples in turn. If I’m bored I’m doing it wrong. (Frustration, on the other hand, is unfortunately legit.) Lastly, if I ever feel too daunted, I just have to imagine that I’m the hero of an epic fantasy, and I’ve been given a difficult task not because it is fun or easy or even possible, but because I’m the best hope we have for saving the world.
It’s not quite as simple as taking the Ring to Mount Doom, but in a way landscape architects are vital to managing humanity’s impact on the planet. We help create land use policy, we manage how people live with floods and storms and earthquakes, we create greenways and artificial wetlands and places where humans can connect with the rest of nature, and we bring together folks who butt heads like rams in springtime — ecologists, engineers, home-owners, policy-makers — and get them to communicate. Right, so suddenly struggling with this blasted paper model ‘til 4:30 am doesn’t sound so tough, does it?
I want to change the world. I want to make it beautiful from the inside out. I want to come up with ideas and execute them and be surprised at just how cool those ideas are, and I want other people to admire them when I’m not there. And I have to believe that my efforts won’t be entirely absorbed by the wrinkled napkin of the industrial world. Somehow I don’t think RISD is going to knock sense into me as much as follow these foolhardy dreams with the upmost conviction.
What I have I gotten myself into?





















