sending the elevator back down

about a year ago, i was flipping through the television stations and i came to oprah. now normally i would have kept going, however on that day kevin spacey was on the show promoting his movie, "beyond the sea". while watching the interview, he mentioned some advice that jack lemmon had given him while shooting a movie. jack's advice to him was to make sure that in your life you always send the elevator back down. this means that wherever you are in life, you are there because someone else helped you in some way, shape, or form, and once you get to that position, you need to make sure that you reach down and help others in the same way. in my life many people have sent the elevator down to me. first of all my parents. they have always been there to help with advice. being a year ahead of me, jean has always been there to help me out with advice on studio and classes. and lastly the firm were i did my internship, allowed me to come in and learn the profession of architecture within their office, which provided an enormous amount of information about where i want my life to go.

today i had a small chance to "send the elevator down". i singed up to give a tour of the college of architecture to 6th graders. they were eager to see what went on inside these walls. while showing them the maze of models that line the halls, you could see at how fascinated they were with the miniature buildings. i was curious as to what they did in there lives right now that might apply to architecture. many of them stated that they love "sim city". this can be a very complex game, and it occured to me that these kids, though in 6th grade, are probably very good with using a computer, having grown up with them. it was 1992 when i was in 6th grade, and computers were not apart of my life, however legos consumed most of my free time. i would spent hours building, destroying, and rebuilding structures back up. so i asked them if anyone still played with legos, and to my relief many hands went up. i'm glad to see that they're not always in fornt of the computer, they'll have plenty of time to do that in college. it was however, great to show them around and answer their questions. who knows, maybe in ten years one of them will be giving a tour of seaton.