Today was also the first day of “Smorgs.” Short for Smorgasbord, Smorgs offer students from all disciplines the opportunity to experience another art form for an hour after lunch. Students are asked to sign up for at least three different Smorgs during GSA, and today they got to choose from:

The Wonderful World of African Music: taught by Scott Locke

Mystery and Mayhem: Music for the Films of Alfred Hitchcock: taught by Joanna Binford

So, You’ve Always Wanted to Play the Piano: taught by Don Speer

Today I got to sit in on the last part of a Creative Writing Workshop taught by Mitchell Douglas. When I came in, Creative Writing faculty member Ellen Hagan whispered to me, “We’re writing about names,” and offered me a piece of paper, but today I just observed. Some of the students read their poems aloud and I recognized them as the names I had been typing into Excel spreadsheets for weeks now—they chose a name, someone in the room, and wrote a poem describing what that name sounded like or who the person with that name was. Mr. Douglas asked a student to repeat the last line of her poem and repeated it, “Wraps you up like a blanket,” he said, “that’s a wonderful image.” There were many wonderful images in the poems they read, so I can only imagine what their writing will be like at the end of these three weeks.

When I walked into the Architecture workspace, faculty member Jeff Rawlins told me what the students were doing. There was a giant tarp in the middle protecting the floor from what I knew must be “the moped” everyone had been talking about. The Architecture faculty had found an old moped and brought it in for the students to take apart. Many of the students had never done anything like this, but realized that they learned a lot about the machine by taking it apart. They then put the pieces into systems and made many study drawings before breaking into groups and designing cities with the pieces they grabbed. I noticed the drawings on the wall and was taken aback by how stunning they were, and when I asked a couple of the students which ones were theirs I was surprised to hear, “well, they’re all kind of ours.” Mr. Rawlins explained that before they took apart the moped they had the students draw it, and the faculty noticed the different ways the students approached the drawing. Some were drawing the whole form, but others were focusing on smaller details. Seeing this, the faculty announced, “Okay! Now pass your drawing down eight spaces!” From an entirely different viewpoint, the next student took up the drawing he or she was handed. When the faculty noticed that some students were only using the charcoal while others were working with pencil, they told the students to pass their drawings again. I was blown away by all of the drawings hanging on the wall.