What was time like at architecture
school during the early '80's?

At the time I was at Princeton, Michael Graves was definitely the sort of guru of Princeton, and I always thought that he seems to have a really interesting life. Here was someone who on the one hand was teaching and was very well respected and always seemed to be.. was a very good teacher, always seemed to be interested and interesting. And at the same time, I was there when he went from basically sort of doing cubist kitchens to starting to get some really big buildings. I really found that as a person I didn't always get along with him all that well. It was not easy, we never had an easy sort of friendly relationship. And there was mutual respect but, as a person he wasn't a mentor. I thought the idea of someone who was teaching and had a practice, boy, that just seemed like such an interesting way to lead a life. And I think that is very much part of what attracted me to teaching.

I had some women faculty who were teaching assistants, and there was a woman, Para(?) Goldman, who taught at Princeton for a while while I was there, Judy Wallen(?) did a guest studio, a guest seminar that I took while I was there. But virtually there were no fulltime female faculty while I was there. That just never was an issue, being able to have a female architect as a mentor. But I didn't feel that it was really a problem for me to have men who were mentors. It never really bothered me

I had one professor who out and out told me women didn't belong in architecture studios. He was a much older professor, he was very bitter that Princeton had gone coed, and he out and out told me, and he screwed me on a grade. I mean I had gotten A's on every single project, and I suddenly get a B+, and I went to him and said "Excuse me, but how did this add up?" And he says, "You got a B+. Be satisfied." And I looked into it, and he had never ever given any woman higher than a B+. So in his eyes I had done very well. And I then brought it to the attention of the director of the undergrad program, whoever, who simply said "Look, I've got you next semester. I'll try to make up for it, but there are certain minds you can't change, and it's not worth fighting the battle." I wasn't happy, obviously, with that, but if anything it taught me that yes, there are different generations, and you deal with different generations differently.