[Robert Zagaroli 3rd]

Much has changed in the past few weeks. As a first writing assignment please introduce yourself to the class.
Some info about your classes, your interests or just how things are going since we’ve been at home.

A few paragraphs or more is fine. Please add to this thread or reply to post your writing.

[kasemkourani]

Hi, my name is Kasem Kourani. Since starting my classes online, I’ve noticed many different changes. Some for the better and some for the worse. For instance, One benefit from doing my classes online is that I don’t have to take an hour long to and from campus. This in turn also allows me to wake up a little later than usual because I usually have to wake up earlier to get myself ready and catch the train. Something that has changed for the worse however is that some of the resources that were previously available to me in other classes are harder to get online. I was able to download Rhino onto my laptop successfully but unfortunately, I still have some issues downloading Photoshop, InDesign, etc. as my laptop is out of date. Other than that, distance learning also allowed me to be a bit more flexible with my time.

[B]

Hi Professor.
I’m Batya Gutman.
I’m sorry to hear you have been having a difficult time adjusting. I hope it gets easier for you.
Thank G-d I am healthy but I am having a very difficult time with the adjustment too.

About a year ago, when my youngest was three and he was going to be in school most of the day, I decided it was an opportune time for me to go back to school and obtain a degree in the field of design. For a long time it had been a hobby but I wanted to make it into a career. I made the decision to leave my job as a bookkeeper/office manager and become a full time student. Initially, when we were told that all CUNY classes would be moving to an online platform, I thought to myself maybe I could do this. But as the weeks have carried on, my hopes have dimmed. There are many anomalies that have been lead me to this mindset.

First and foremost, I am a mom. As much as I am enjoying being home with my children, caring for my their safety and well-being 24-7, is (more than) a full time job. It takes a lot out of me physically, mentally and emotionally. My children (usually) attend private school. Unfortunately, most of their schools have not set up full on-line learning systems as the public schools have. Their education basically consists of calling into a conference line on various schedules, a total of 20-60 minutes/day. However, as of today they are on a two week spring break until 4/20/20.

Secondly, I have some close family members and many community members who are not well and being that I am religious I spend a substantial amount of time praying and working on my spiritual health.

Furthermore, I am enrolled in five courses this semester. Design III, Building Tech II, History until 1900, Site Planning and Structures I. Each course has its class time, assignments, readings, quizzes and home work. I am doing my best to attend classes but honestly I don’t have the amount of hours to do the work that I thought I would have when I signed up for courses. Also, I feel like by not being in school I don’t have the support of peers, faculty and educational resources that I would normally have.

Finally, I celebrate the holiday of Passover. It starts the eve of April 8th and will be over Thursday April 16 after nightfall. It is a time we usually travel as a family to spend time with grandparents and cousins. We usually don’t have to be too busy with the pre-Passover prep required by those who stay home . The prep includes a great amount of cleaning, shopping, cooking and organization. This year because of the circumstances we had to change our plans to hunker down at home. Because I was never home for this holiday, I don’t have too much experience preparing and the process is therefore much more tedious and time consuming.

The pressure of all of the above is really a lot to handle right now. I’m trying my best to keep afloat and focus on all that I have to be thankful for.

[Prz_Macks]

My name is Macks Perez. I am taking architectural classes to try and integrate into the what lessons I have learned in Mechanical Engineering Technology. My interests are hand drafting, methods in reproducing graphical plans or diagrams either analog or digital, architecture and general three dimensional model building.

Online classes require more materials than a traditional classroom does. I have little experience in obtaining credits for actual online classes. With the situation right now it has given me new methods of accomplishing deliverables. These include written and actual plates to be presented to class. It is difficult because reproducing actual plans and diagrams are easier with a physical scanner than using a digital camera to shoot upright against any sheet of paper.
Producing written material is easier with word or any other text document. It is in projects involving physics, chemistry, design that becomes difficult. Anything that requires some amount of three dimensional aspect, experiments, physical models and even presentations become a scrambled version of available material especially with limited visual equipment.
If an instructor required physical models, they can be translated into digital versions using any rendering software, but that would entail a crash course in any software as you depend proficiency with the said software. With that said, the architectural classes I am taking have been appreciable.
For a design class, there has been steady progress with site analysis and theory.
For a building technology class, that has been a challenge, since producing hand drafted work is critical.
For manual drafting to be reproduced I have been able to shoot digital for an 18 by 24 sheet. I was able to submit for a progress report as though it were a conventional aspect in a normal drafting room.
For a site planning class, same progress and will hopefully apply what methods have been learned.
As for classroom discussion, its turn out is normal, schedules are set, check in with either video conferencing or virtual submissions.
The disadvantage for online classes is that any actual relay for either information or idea becomes very “virtual” and the mechanical process becomes overridden with the limitation of what can be sent through the internet. So to provide ideas any individual is limited with the actual devices ie. computer cameras and software but it evolves into a two step procedure when new software and technical know how has to be learned. But all in all a personal initiative is needed for actual progression for anything online and still all virtual information needs an “actual verification”.
Looking forward to the remainder of the session for Architectural History. See you soon Professor Zagaroli.

[CJ]

Hello, my name is Carmelo Melendez. Since starting the online classes I have found that it is much more difficult with most of my classes. For my physics and English classes, it has mostly stayed the same with my professors keeping the same schedule and changing some projects from before which would have been group projects for English. One of the hardest things has been trying to contact my professors because with emails it would take a couple of hours or a couple of days. I am glad that I don’t have to wake up as early as I did before and don’t have to spend two hours traveling to the college both coming and going. For my architecture class, I had to order myself a table to draw on since I would do most of my drawing at City Tech I didn’t have anywhere for me to do my drawings. Overall for classes, I am trying to get the hang of this online situation. Being home has been sorta difficult at first because at my house I have my own laptop and a computer in the living room for everyone to use but since it is my mom, my little brother and me who all need the computer for either work or school it was very difficult. My mom would take the computer in the living room working from 9:30 to 6 and on Mondays, she has classes from 7 to 9. My brother would get homework every day and have from 8 to 4 to submit the homework on google classroom. And as for me, I have class every day also but since my schedule was more broken up and I would start later most days my brother would take my laptop and I would have to wait. Besides that, I am glad that I am home with my family and that we are safe. The only one in my family that still goes out is my dad because he is an essential worker and it worries me that he could get sick or get us sick since my brother and I have very back immune systems and because I am constantly hearing from my mom how bad things are getting since we watch the news every day.

[Anamarie]

Hello, my name is Anamarie Perez. Since this virus has been going on, things have been difficult for me. I have never done online classes before. This semester is my first time doing online classes. I am taking 5 classes and doing them online is pretty hard to catch up with, I am very happy that I don’t have to travel anymore. But i have been okay with my online classes. I have taken one midterm so far and it was a bit difficult to do but i passed it. Now Everyday I wake up around 9AM to start doing the homeworks for other classes. I used to wake up before 9AM to work but I got laid of due to this virus. So now all I do is homework and go online to video chat with the professor and my classmates . My mom works from home and my dad doesn’t work because he is disable and my brother does his classwork and homework online. Besides all of this going I am happy to be home and have time with my family. I finally get to rest more than I used. I get to focus a bit more on my homeworks. Overall, me and my family are staying home and we are safe. I hope you are staying home and staying safe.

[Navdeep Kaur]

Hello, my name is Navdeep Kaur. I will first start off by talking about myself and some of my interests. Then I will talk about online classes and the changes that have occurred because of the virus. My major surprisingly is not Architecture, it is Rad Tech. I had a choice from a bunch of electives and I’ve always been interested in Architecture so I ended up choosing this class. When I was in High School I majored in Architecture for the four years so I definitely have some “experience” with all this. Another interest I have is traveling, that is because I love to create memories and experiences. Last year I was lucky enough to travel to Cali, India and Dubai– which was amazing. This summer I am planning on going to LA, because I have never been there before. I booked the tickets so hopefully the whole virus clears up so I can still go. This is a good time to transition to the other part of my paragraph– where I talk about this virus. When the virus started growing and we were told to stay inside , I was actually still working at the time. That whole time I was definitely afraid but at the same time I thought it wouldn’t be such a big deal. Then I was laid off from work and the cases started to grow like crazy, especially In New York. Now the US has the most cases which is really crazy. My mom is definitely more vulnerable and more prone to the virus, because of her past health conditions and her age. Luckily my mom and the rest of my family have been safe. As for the online classes it has been a little difficult , not only for the students but also for more teachers. That is because it is new for everyone. I have some professors that are elder and I feel really bad because they have told us how difficult it is for them. They aren’t used to using all this technology but luckily they are getting used to it and getting more comfortable with it. Even though all of this is going on there have been some advantages. The first one is how clean the Earth has gotten because the pollution has minimized, and crime rates are very very low right now as well.Another advantage is how the communities are coming to together to help one another. People are offering food, homes and supplies to the people that need it. Which is amazing, this is also including the CUNY system. Another advantage is that even though the stock market is crashing, the stocks are really low. Which means it is a good time to buy because then when they go up, the people that bought stocks now have a chance of being rich. Overall I feel like as long as we take precautions and stay optimistic, we will stay safe. Hopefully this goes away soon, and I hope you and your family is doing well as well.

[Cristian Rodriguez]

Hello, my name is Cristian Rodriguez. I’ll start off talking about a few of my interests. One of the most therapeutic hobbies that I decided to pursue when I was 14 was the electric guitar. I had been a blues and classic rock fan for most of my life, so at the age of 14 I decided to see what it was like to play, and I was hooked within minutes. Every day after school I would get home and play over Stevie Ray Vaughan, Eric Clapton, and Buddy Guy CD’s at high volume. It was definitely one of the most enjoyable parts of my early teen years because it really helped me learn to listen to new music from a whole new perspective. With what’s going on in the world right now, I’m very grateful that I have a few guitars to lean back on in order to kill a few hours of my day. These circumstances have also lead me to discover a whole new side of my guitar playing that I was pretty scared of before, which is writing original music, so that’s lead me to become a bit more creative.

The last few weeks have been pretty hectic, I haven’t left my house at all so it’s been a bit boring. We had the first week off until March 19 but my design and btech professors conducted tests to see how the online programs would work and they all worked very well. So far, all of my online classes have been working out very well, productivity is pretty much the same as it would be if everything was normal, which is good. The only major things that have changed are our mediums, for Btech, we started using a smaller paper size so that it would accommodate with our current working space at home. Also, we haven’t made any physical models for design II, only photoshop and rhino drawings.

As for the virus itself, I’m not scared at all of getting it myself, what I fear most is my friends and loved ones getting it. That’s why I’ve also been taking this time to speak with a lot of my relatives and to really take advantage of the time I have left with them. This situation has taught me a lot of things as well, it’s taught me to be grateful for the relationship I have with my parents at home, because I can’t imagine what my life would be like in these moments if I lived in a dysfunctional household, so I am very happy for that. I’ve also come to realize that this could be a time for human beings to take a break and learn new things, fix a few problems we might have going on, or just simply to take a break from other people.

I hope everyone is doing well, stay safe, and take good advantage of this time.

-Cristian

[Janan Yu]

Hello, my name is Janan. Some of my hobbies are skateboarding and playing guitar. I started skateboarding about 5 years ago and I have been at it ever since. Guitar I started a year ago and I have not stopped playing. This time during the quarantine I haven’t had a chance to go outside to skate however I’ve been playing guitar for hours on end. My major is Architectural Technology as I studied architecture in high school and I wanted to pursue it as a career. The Virus has made the motivation to do work a little difficult as I am home all day and it can be very distracting.
Online classes are definitely not as interesting as actually going to class. The perks of online classes are we do not need to travel to get to class, we can just turn on our computers or phones and click on a link and we are good to go. In my design class, we were going to have a midterm presentation and I was really worried that it wouldn’t work. However, creating a PowerPoint with the images of my work and sharing my screen made my presentation very easy. For Building tech it is a similar concept as the professor shares his screen and gives a lecture for the topic. We would also share our work and get helpful critiques which help us improve our work.
For site planning, it is the same as well just a PowerPoint for a lecture and descriptions of work we have to complete. This goes the same for Arch History. The virus is something not to mess around with as us younger people do not develop harmful symptoms but we can spread it to our family members and it wouldn’t be so nice. New York City arent as cooperative with the distancing as people continue to do their daily activities without the consideration of others. This is my New York City has become the epicenter of the Virus. I hope everyone is doing alright.

[Vanessa Gallego]

Hi, my name is Vanessa Gallego. When I was 12 years I gained interest in sketching houses and that’s how my love for architecture began. I went to a high school that teached architecture and I knew I wanted to pursue it.Ever since i have been home i have been personally hit from this pandemic.My mother is a medical assistant that had close contact with a patient that had flu-like symptoms and that lead my mom to contraction the vius. You dont know the feeling of helplessness that Andrew Como and the president talks about the lack of necessities that we need that eventually takes a toll on our love ones and the patients currently battling this pandemic.I never thought this would lead to such a rapid spread in a short amount of time. I get anixity just looking at the news and how my reality is different from the things that they portrayed. I am happy to say that my mom was isolated for 15 days and has completed to a full recovery. There were moments that I would see her gasping for air, worried sick that my mom was going to die and would never get to see her only child succeed and become an architect. I urge all of you guys to stay home!!!

[Farouk]

Hello my name is Farouk Fares im a freshman in Citytech. The reason I want to become an architect is quite simple I have been drawing and designing builds as soon as I could pick up a pencil. I never thought I would do anything else. Every time an adult asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up, my answer was always an architect. As I grew the more, I learned. I developed my first 3D model at the age of 11 and drawing blueprints before that. My old art teacher saw the dedication I had towards art and design and she pushed me to keep progressing.

[Franklin Bravo]

Hello, My name is Franklin Bravo, and I realize Im writing this really late. The reason I’m starting architecture is that I’ve i always had an interest in architecture, and finally enrolled to take classes. Although it is hard work, I always find myself having fun when working on projects, and really enjoy working with my hands. It is tough right now taking classes online, I’m having a lot of trouble trying to retain information. But I’m trying my best while also trying to look out for my family.

[Esdras lopez]

Hello
My name is Esdras Lopez. This distance learning has been a good and a bad thing to many of us. For me i don’t have to wake up really early to get to campus. For me its been kind of difficult for me to adapt to the distance learning because im not a fan of me being on a computer for three hours, i rather be in person learning than through a computer, but i have to adapt because of what is going on in the world today. Im in the Architecture program and it’s difficult for me to get my drawings done because i don’t have the materials needed to do my drawings. I don’t live in a big house, in my home we all live together in one room and we don’t have a lot of space and their is only one table which is our dining table and sometimes i have to bother my family to let me use the table to do the drawings. For me its difficult because i don’t have a paralliner to have a nice and straight line i try my best making my drawing straight as possible. The only bad thing is that in my home i get easily distracted because everyone is in the same room and they aré always doing something. But its just something that i have to find my way through in order to complete my work.

[Anthony O.]

Hello, my name is Anthony Ortega. This is my second semester in school. Similar to many students, I never thought I would have to take online classes. I prefer to be in person and be physically in class. The transition isn’t too hard, but it’s not too easy. Not having to take the train and wake up early for a class is a benefit. However, I feel more comfortable at home, which can make me distracted. I had some difficulty trying to get the resources that the school provided, such as Rhino and the Adobe programs.
I think I can speak for many when I say that we were confused as to how the architecture department would handle the situation. Many of our classes require hands-on activities, such as ass drawing and model making. But not being in person to talk with our professors and receive feedback would be difficult.
My life outside of school has been pretty boring. I’m not used to being inside for such a long period. I’m glad that none of my family members have been infected, but I know some that have but have recovered. Staying home and being on the phone all day seems great when you’re in school, but now that I’m actually on my phone all day, it’s not as great as it seems.
I really hope that everyone is doing fine, is safe, and pushes through this

[Jasmine Griffith]

Good Afternoon,
Hello my name is Jasmine Griffith. Some of you may know me as the girl that always walks in late. I am 18 years old and my birthday is on July 26, 2001. I am a young, African American woman with big dreams and goals. My favorite things to do in life are dancing, swimming, and sketching. I am a very creative, motivated and outspoken person. I fear that I won’t be as successful as my other siblings in life and my mom won’t see me as equally talented. My goal for my future is to create my own dance foundation and a safe space for kids to express themselves and their emotions.
I am not a normal college student. I started an early college program in my high school, City Polytechnic High School for Engineering, Architecture, and Technology. I started my program in the middle of my senior year. The two classes I was enrolled in were Math and Black theater. I joined this program not knowing the pressure and the difficulty I was facing, and not knowing I was giving up enjoying the greatest parts of my senior year. I was unaware that I would have to sacrifice creating the greatest memories I could have made with my classmates before leaving. Dealing with my college and high school courses was a challenge, but I was determined to do great throughout this new experience. However, my Black Theater class began to pull me down with everything going on with my high school classes. So, unfortunately, I had to drop the class. I then graduated high school with a C in College Math and I was very proud of myself.
As I moved forward in life, I started my first real semester as a college student with another set of classes from my program. I started public speaking and my first actual architecture class. Public speaking helped me a lot in my life and for the future. I got the opportunity to learn how to feel comfortable speaking to others without having an anxiety attack. I’ve learned how to form a speech for any audience that I might face. Even though all of these key points are great for the future, public speaking helped me in my personal life as well. During all the activities and drills given to me, I was able to open up about things in my life that I was hiding from my classmates that misunderstood me or misjudged me. By doing this, it helped me feel better as a person because I felt like I didn’t have to hide who I really was or the pain I was going through by myself anymore.
My first Architecture class was a great experience. I didn’t know how good of a sketch artist I was until I stepped foot in that class, and it was a wonderful experience to enjoy. In this class, I made the greatest of friends that I still speak to presently. Long story short, I passed those two classes with a B+ and a C, which are great accomplishments for me.
Although my other semesters were a bit smooth, this one seems to be very hectic. I have a lot going on, and I am not sure if I am going to come out on top. This semester, I started my first full semester; This means I’m registered for a set of 4 classes instead of just two. During this hectic semester, I am going through a lot of family and self esteem issues, and a lot of overwhelming pressure. I have allowed these things to get in the way of my school work and as a result, I’m struggling to stay on the surface of passing this year. What makes it worse, is being involved in remote learning due to this pandemic. Remote learning is making me even more disconnected and I am struggling to focus with the extra comfortability of being at home