Category Archives: Place at GSU

A Place at State

Posted on by
Reply

Every time I pass the Art and Humanities steps it reminds me of my first semester at Georgia State University. When I first transferred to GSU I was frazzled by the immense size of this urban campus. One of the easiest, most central locations for me to find was the Art and Humanities building so my friend and I would constantly meet on those stairs after class. One of my first classes ever taken at Georgia State was also located within this building so I would walk up those steps each day I was on campus. Although I have not had a class within that building for a few semesters now, I still use it as a chief meeting place whenever I want to find someone on campus. The stairs are very prominent because of their immense size and close proximity to a majority of Georgia State buildings. Most people know exactly where you are talking about if you mention them no matter how long they have walked the streets of Georgia State’s campus. If am waiting between classes sometimes I will sit on the outside stairs to pass the time. I also often use the Arts and Humanities buildings as a point of reference to find other buildings on campus. For example, I had never been to Dahlberg Hall so I traced a route using the Art and Humanities as my starting place. My mother received her degree from the Georgia State College of Arts and Humanities, so this building also reminds me of her.

#dubbelgsu

#dubbelgsu

Coffee shops and rooftops

Posted on by
Reply

ebrik

I am from a tiny, tiny town in Northwest Georgia. Nothing terribly exciting happens too often, and I can’t go to the grocery store without seeing a dozen people I know.

I transferred to GSU in the fall of 2015. I found Georgia State — well, Atlanta in general — to be overwhelming my first few months here for obvious reasons. I’m not used to being in a crowd and not knowing everybody’s name and face.

Continue reading →

Pooh at GSU.

Posted on by
Reply

13334822_1040305986062794_2146213958_o This guy scared me hardcore the first time I saw him.   I happen to be from a very small town, so my first couple of weeks walking around the Georgia State University campus were spent frantically staring all around me, searching for the murderers that my parents had assured me I was going to find.  I expected crazy people… not a life size cardboard cut out of Pooh Bear staring at me from an office building (where I often saw very well dressed people having meetings).  Seeing Pooh became something that I would look forward to and seek out in order to feel more confident with school.  When I was little, Pooh was my hero, so seeing him while on my way to my Legal Environment of Business final made me feel better, even if I was still terrified of the big city.

GSU Writing Studio

Posted on by
Reply

T

Writing Studio Front Desk; Image taken from GSU Writing Studio Website

he Georgia State University Writing Studio is located on the 24th floor the of the Park Place building, which was formerly known as the Sun Trust Building as it provided office space for the Sun Trust Banking Conglomerate before being leased to Georgia State. The building’s history as a bank provides a great deal of interest to the space inside of it as there are many incongruous (but therefor interesting) elements to the building. There is, for instance, an old bank vault in the basement of Park Place. I have been tempted on more than one occasion to tape a sign reading “problem student containment area” to its entrance. These incongruities create a depth to the experience of place in Park Place that you cannot obtain elsewhere on campus.

The thing that makes the Writing Studio my favorite location on GSU’s campus is the way that the repurposing of the former bank location has unearthed a new value in the location’s design. I do not explicitly know what the GSU Writing Studio location’s original purpose was but, given its size and relative elevation, I assume it must have served as a meeting room. The windows and the openness of the location, which might have once facilitated discussion between large numbers of people now facilitate one on one discussion and provide a positive setting that students can access to discuss methods of improving their writing with tutors. While there are many reasons why I like the Writing Studio, this repurposing and re-realization is the primary reason I like the Writing Studio as a location.

A Change of (S)pace

Posted on by
Reply

parking spaceI hate change.  I am terrified of it.  Last fall I began my third year at Georgia State, and I was facing some major changes.  I was finishing my course work and looking fearfully towards a future of comprehensive exams and dissertation writing.  The classroom is my safe space, and leaving that space gave me a lot of anxiety.  While I was struggling to contend with this inevitable progression, a different change hit me out of nowhere.

Technically, I suppose, I was the one that came out of nowhere.  I was driving on the interstate in the rain when my car hit a slick spot.  I lost control, spun across the median, and continued into oncoming traffic.  My car was struck twice, once by another sedan and then by a moving truck.  At the hospital, the doctors said that I had broken my back in two places in addition to fracturing my sacrum, and I had to get stitches in my leg where a piece of the passenger side door had lodged itself in my calf.  I spent three days in the hospital under observation until I was able to go home, luckily without having to undergo surgery.

As one might imagine, this event had a major impact on my life.  My previous anxiety turned into a full-blown life crisis.  What was I doing? How could I go back to school?  What meaning do I gain in life from study for comps and writing a dissertation?  How am I making a difference in the world?  More than anything, what ultimately kept me connected to GSU was my students.  I know that my future is in the classroom.  I couldn’t abandon my freshmen, and I couldn’t abandon a future in teaching by running scared from the next steps I had to take.

Which brings me, finally, to the picture.  After a month of rest and rehabilitation, I was able to return to school.  The first thing I had to do when coming back was to get a handicapped parking place.  My most meaningful place on campus is this parking place.  It is, of course, a symbol of the accident and what I went through.  But to me, it also represents a recommitment to my future and my scholarly work.

Change found me once more, but this time, I learned to embrace it.  I found positive change these past months through healing.  This parking space in now empty because I don’t need it anymore.  In March I completed a 5k race, and I am now training for a sprint triathlon.  I have learned that change is something to embrace instead of fear, even when it seems scary.

Office Space

Posted on by
Reply

My office is where I prepare for teaching and taking classes. I spend most days before class reading over materials and most afternoons being available to meet with students about their writing. I moved into this office last semester with some apprehension. I feared the move from Langdale Hall to 25 Park Place. I expected to feel uncomfortable. My office is a shared office space—one that I share with five other people. I feared the close quarters of working relationships. But I’ve found that the people I’ve seen in my office have only enriched my experience as a teacher and student.

I’ve talked with one colleague about his experience taking comprehensive exams and with another about his classes in literary theory. Although I was hesitant at first about sharing a space with other Graduate Teaching Assistants, I’ve found that the professional relationships have been valuable and significant to my educational experience. This space has become a safe space for me—one that I enjoy in solitude and with other like-minded academics. It’s a quiet and calming space, especially with the lights turned low.

On long days, I spend time after classes relaxing and unwinding in the space of my office. Sometimes I put on some soft music and sit back in my chair with my eyes closed; other times, I dive directly into the next project, paper, or teaching plan. This space provided me with somewhere away from home that I can be productive, but it also nurtures a lifestyle of intentional and personal restoration.

At Home Among the Books

Posted on by
1

IMG_5488-1w0ldfx-300x300

The hum of whispering students, pulsating whirs of the air-conditioning, flickering florescent lights: it is curious that the Georgia State library is my favorite place on campus. It is not the physical structure of the place that I enjoy, but it is my experience in between the shelves of books that leads me to this conclusion. Sometimes I visit the library simply to wander through the isles, sifting through book titles and their pages with no intention of locating a particular book. Instead, the titles and covers call for my attention and I respond by flipping through the pages of books that catch my eye. For me, the library lets my mind explore new places, entering into intellectual and imaginative spaces. I am transported, momentarily, from the physical place of the library into a theoretical, immaterial space of the words and my own thoughts. The book creates its own space as I turn the pages and skim a few lines. These trips to the library typically lead to an overabundance of checked-out books that exist in the corner of my room as a stack of unrealistic expectations–spaces and places yet to be discovered, concealed in paperback and hardcovers that I tell myself I will have time to read. After my trips to the library, I often stop at my other favorite places near GSU–the local coffee shops (how will I read all of these books without coffee?). Ebrik has a laid-back atmosphere with a neighborhood feel and cozy coffee-shop ambiance. It is often crowded, but sometimes I can snag a window seat and watch the passersby; I find stillness in the buzz of the city as I sip my coffee, peering into my newly acquired books. 

My GSU home

Posted on by
Reply

IMG_20160520_155215

Thinking about my GSU home, my mind goes to the General Classroom Building’s 9th floor, where I had my office when I came to GSU in August 2000. My mental picture of the campus is inseparable from my first office here, my experiences settling into a new work “home,” and the building itself. Of course, GCB is no longer GCB; it’s [yikes! I’m drawing a blank! I just had to google it to find out] Langdale Hall.

The name change came after the English department moved its offices to the former Sun Trust Building at 25 Park Place. But this change in my physical map—the way I literally move through GSU’s campus—hasn’t made a change in my mental map. (Or, perhaps, my mental map is changing more slowly than my physical one). When I think of GSU, I mentally inhabit my 9th-floor GCB office.

I associate that space with meeting new colleagues, starting a new job, taking on new responsibilities, meeting a succession of students, researching and writing and grading an ever-new assortment of essays. In my mind, it has a sort of sheen of the new, of expansion and change and growth.

Yet as I walked on campus to capture my mental image of GCB in photographs, I found that I could not do so; this image exists in my imagination and not in reality. As I walked my old route from the Georgia State MARTA station, I realized how subterranean my pre-Park Place existence was. I’d walk underneath Collins Street (with its “Caution: Bridge Spalling” signs; looking up the unfamiliar “spalling,” I learned it means, essentially, “falling down”), then through the parking lot under the building, then to the same entrance/exit that the garbage goes through.

Going to teach in Classroom South, Kell, or Sparks, or trekking to the Library or Student Center, I’d again go under the building—past the rat traps and the dripping pipes, through the stale, dank air—to get to my destination.

How can THIS have the glow of expansion, the sheen of growth? Space is objective, and objectively, this space says “underfunded urban university that does not care about the appearance of things community outsiders rarely see.” But as a place informed by my experiences, GCB, subjectively enhanced, takes on a different character entirely.