Julia Yu

Julia Yu

This assignment turned out to be much more difficult than I anticipated. I started by sketching the yard, but quickly found the both the river and the Quad were too far away for me to accurately render. Eventually I figured that drawing the map digitally and being able to stretch the canvas at will would be the easiest way. The areas that were easiest for me to draw (and probably the most difficult for some) was the area North of the Science Center. I live in the Dudley Coop and bike this way every day, and I spend a lot of time around Divinity Ave and Oxford Street as a biology concentrator. I tried to visualize everything as I drew it - what I saw on my left and right, how long it took me to walk or bike down a street, etc. - but it was still very difficult to remember the buildings I pass by every day. I didn’t know what any of the houses looked like from above (even Winthrop, where I used to live) so those ended up fairly inaccurate, except for Leverett Towers, which are somewhat distinctive. Mather and Dunster I rarely visit and so are relegated to being indistinct blobs. The case was the same for the business school and stadium. I was especially bad at delineating streets, as I don’t drive and rarely pay attention to traffic. There are several intersections I couldn’t get to link up: the one by Annenberg, for example, as well as the one by the T stop.

I am typically not very good with directions, but I often use landmarks to guide me. I think for this reason I was able to draw most of the buildings that exist on Harvard campus, but their sizes and shapes are largely incorrect. Similarly, I’m sure a more avid driver would be able to draw the intersections and roads more easily than I.