End of Term Thoughts...And a bit of a tirade towards the end.

It seems amazing that it is almost Christmas. Time has seemed to fly by during this first semester. I guess that that is what happens when you are really enjoying yourself. I feel so lucky and blessed that I have been  able to go back to school and learn how to do something that truly interests me and that I can see myself doing for the rest of my life. The past couple of weeks have especially struck this home for me. We've had some of the best instructors, who I've really been able to learn from and get a fuller understanding of what I will be capable of doing at the end of all of this.

We've had four lectures that have really stood out for me, two by a Landscape Architect and two by a Heritage Consultant, who were able to really outline the kind of jobs I am interested in pursuing and that I'll be qualified for doing at the end of all this, as a Heritage Consultant. It's really quite an exciting job (perhaps just to me) but as I understand it, I would hopefully get to be a 'renaissance woman.' It would be different for every job, on some jobs I might be the person researching the aspects of a specific historical type of roofing or panelling or the whole interior or the whole exterior. On other jobs, I might be in charge of researching the whole building, its context within its landscape, within it's historical and cultural context, and what to do to conserve/restore/adaptive reuse a building.

It really all seems to now be coming into focus. I now know why we have been learning so many different things, its because we'll never know what will be useful in any one particular job. So we'll need drafting for reading plans and for problem-solving building problems; we'll need hand carpentry so we'll recognize the original techniques used and be able to describe those techniques to our modern tradespeople; we'll need knowledge of architectural styles, well, so that we will know what is typical to one style and what would be found on each individual building, etc., etc.

I am also feeling less guilty about all of the education I already have, and which, everyone seemed to think I should have used in a different way. I am so grateful that I have had a great humanities education, because it looks like all those researching and writing skills will come in handy when I'm writing up reports on built heritage.

I know a lot of people may not really 'get' what it is that we do here at Willowbank, that it might seem a strange way to learn, with constantly changing classes on every topic under the heritage building rainbow. But after having quite a few conversations with Tim lately on how the conventional university model is broken, how it doesn't seem to be about learning how to write and understanding your subjects, it's now all just about getting a good enough grade, so that you can go on and become a lawyer and buy yourself all kinds of nice consumer goods. I am appreciating more and more the approach at Willowbank and that it is really about how much the individual students take away from it and how we apply our knowledge.

I truly feel blessed that I have found a place where the normal teaching method isn't used. Where we are encouraged to get as much out of every class as we think will be pertinent to our interests. Where we have a great balance of practical technique learning, and a theoretical understanding of architectural styles and cultural landscapes. Where links to our history is celebrated and informs the modern use of historic buildings.

And just so that this isn't all completely boring for you and just a monologue on non-traditional learning, here are some pictures of this weeks advances in carpentry class. We are almost done our panels, all of which has been preparation for us learning how to build a door (so that we know how the design of one works). But I'll get more into that in the New Year.

Kristina and her first panel. Can you tell that we were pretty excited to be working on the last step of our project? You can also probably tell that it is ri-donculously hot in the workshop. 

My first panel and its frame. We'll be finishing off the second panel in the new year and than fitting everything together. What you can't see are the awesome dados I chiseled out of each part.

P.S. Now that school is done for the term and we are galavanting all over Ontario I'm not sure how frequent my posts will be. But I'll try to post about anything exciting we do.