My new studio desk. I love it. It's right next to the giant window and the balcony. The sunlight streams in at just the right angle. <3

As today is the first day of school *hyperventilate*, I decided now would be a good time to remind myself exactly why I'm going and why I want to be a Landscape Architect.  *deep breath* Ok...

Should we start from the beginning? No, that would take too long..... oh screw it. From the beginning!

Senior year of high school I still had absolutely NO CLUE what I wanted to do or who I wanted to be. I was pretty lost. All of my friends had pretty much already graduated and I found myself without my little bubble of comfort. Luckily there were a few kind souls who were charitable enough to claim that I had been their friend all along. haha. This sounds like such a sob story, I swear it's not. This was pretty much exactly what went through my mind at the time. I count myself very lucky to have made the friends I did.

 As we progressed through the year I just sort of went through the motions of everything without any real conviction. I took AP classes and didn't take the AP Tests, I know... I didn't understand alright? and I'd been convinced that they wouldn't help me anyhow. Basically, I was in denial that I was a step behind everyone else. Even my best friend at the time knew what he wanted to do. He's one of the most laid back but put together guys ever, it was so annoying ;P

Application time came and went, I realized I needed to do something and finally applied to a few colleges only a couple days before their deadlines. Some I knew I could get into, some I had no chance with but mostly I just felt that I wanted to go to the school my sister had gone to. She'd hated high school and sort of shut herself in but when she came back from college she'd changed into a new person. I wanted to see the cause of that.

I applied to college with interests in Psychology, Philosophy, Ecology, and Architecture. Which basically tells you just how scattered my thoughts were. And some time later, I got a letter in the mail asking if I wanted to be part of the Landscape Architecture program and my "dream" school. I had no idea what that meant. I googled the term and read the first few lines of wikipedia,

 "Landscape architecture is the design of outdoor public areas, landmarks, and structures to achieve environmental, social-behavioral, or aesthetic outcomes.  It involves the systematic investigation of existing social, ecological, and soil conditions and processes in the landscape, and the design of interventions that will produce the desired outcome." 

With that information but still no real clue what I was getting myself into, I accepted the offer. Vaguely wondering whether every other student had been offered this opportunity. (I learned later that wasn't the case but I still really know exactly why they'd picked me.) It just seemed to fit all of my interests together I sort of just felt like God just plopped this in my lap and said, "There, take it or leave it."  So I took it and they sent me a book , "Becoming a Landscape Architect"by Kelleann Foster. I didn't really read it until later in the summer right before I left for college. But when I read it, the definitions given by landscape architects really caught me. it started to make more sense. 

"Landscape Architecture offers an opportunity to meld creativity with a love of the land and the ability to create places that are everlasting in a way that [benefits] the ecology and the quality of a community's life."
~Roy Kraynyk

"Landscape Architecture is... the hybridization of art, science, economics, and politics at different scales."
~Julia Czerniak

"One of the things that we say in our office is, 'the sky is mine.' Landscape architecture isn't just confined to dirt and bushes, it is all things that are under the sky."
~Jennifer Guthrie

"We're a combination of art people and engineering people -- ... get a civil engineer and an artist together and get them married and have children, then their children would be a perfect fit to be landscape architects"
~Scott S. Weinberg

*As an update, I want to be a landscape architect who also works in and incorporates graphic and interior design.