A Year in Review

Ah, winter break! A well-deserved reprieve for hard-working students everywhere, a kind gift for (hopefully) acing finals and reviews. Especially reviews. 

It’s hard to believe that the year is already coming to an end, but what a year it has been. I’ll spare you the misery of reading a long and boring recap where I brag about all the things I’ve accomplished in 12 months like an overly proud parent who loves voicing how proud she is of little Bobby’s bronze medal in the peewee olympics. 

How do you measure a year in the life? Let’s break it down:
2 schools
1.5 semesters of college
1 really bad haircut
1 new pair of glasses that I am now unable to not wear
12 job prospects
6 months of tutoring
7 days in the mountains
60 min. commute to school during rush hour (with a ride to the train)
90 min. commute to school on the weekend
3 x 30-Day Unlimited Metrocard 
3 x 7-Day Unlimited Metrocard
6 Everlane tees 
2 overworn pairs of BDG hi-rise black pants
8 AM arrivals Mon-Fri
8 PM/later departures 
5 rolls of paper (of various types)
4 8B pencils
4 sketchbooks; 2 full, 2 in progress
2 lost Muji pens (1 of which is indefinitely out of stock at NYT Muji)
0 misplaced/broken/stolen items of significant value (other than the Muji pen which I loved so dearly)
1 arch school all-nighter (quite a feat, I’ve come to hear)
2 midnight trips to Insomnia Cookies
1 fantastic semester

And of course, there are items of unknown quantities, all of which are better left unknown…
Lety’s dessert bundles
Starbucks lattés
visits to the art store
Muffins, so many muffins
Breakfast sammies

But you can’t reduce an entire 525,600 moments to numbers! Ask yourself this: are you happier now than you were in January? In an ideal world, the answer will always be a resounding YES. But I can’t help but pose the question of how high your happiness can grow after a certain point. I think I’ll control myself from plunging into the philosophy and economics of happiness now. Take a moment to consider your happiness though, and challenge yourself to be happier in the upcoming year. Everything is possible.

I’ll close this note with a very big THANK YOU. Thank you to everyone—and I mean everyone—for being such fantastic people who have contributed to my journey. Wow I feel like I’m writing an acceptance speech for a major award that I haven’t even been considered for (what?). 

Live on, friends! Work harder, dream harder, make bigger goals, achieve them all with flying colors, impress people, fight for what you love, let go of what you lose; live, love, peace, and prosper! 

Forever yours,

J

Brain aches

It feels like this sentiment is long overdue because it's been on my mind for quite some time. It, like 90% of the things that I think about these days, is about architecture. But this time, it's not about how much I love architecture or any of the plethora of related topics. Rather, it's how disappointed I am with architecture. Specifically, I'm disappointed with the imposition of reality on architecture. (Which is basically every engineer's job)

Before you pursue architecture, you imagine that everything architectural fits inside a box. When you begin to take an interest in the field, a door appears and you step inside. Then school starts and you're taught to take a sledgehammer to those walls because there is no box. Actually, allow me to correct myself: there is a box. It represents everything that you've ever assumed to be true and the world outside of the box is the uncomfortable, whatever it may be. But the presence of a box is entirely dependent on your acknowledgement of the box: If you don't acknowledge the a box, there is a box, and vice versa. Then there are people like me who kindly acknowledge the box then proceed to ignore it for the entirety of Thanksgiving dinner. (what am I even trying to say?)

Anyway, the box initially represents the parameters you place on yourself: the things you don't think are possible, the things you want to recreate that you've seen in magazines, stuff like that. But as architecture school progresses, a box will progressively begin to form around you. This time, the box represents the parameters of reality. And by the time you graduate, you will have learned how to create "good" architecture that creatively fits within this reality-shaped box.

So here I am, immersed in the ocean of unreality, thinking that I can create totally unrealistic things because there is no box. But by 2018, I'll be enclosed back in a box that I may be pining to break free from. I'm questioning my place in this Mobius strip world where there is reality and unreality at the same time while I only want to be in unreality.

Maybe I'm overthinking things. Maybe I should just succumb to the expectations of my peers, elders, etc., and continue on in this unsatisfying world. Will I become an architect at the end of the road? Probably not. Maybe I will. Maybe I'll encounter a billionaire developer who embraces unreality and will hire me to build things that can never be.

Side note: I've become very disinterested in the word "building." It leaves a yucky blerghness in my brain whenever I have to utter it.

Side note 2: I'm fairly certain my brain is slightly incapacitated, for I have been recently incapable of translating my ideas from brain to speech.

Side note 3: We learn not to get attached to our ideas and I've become so unattached that I' m not grasping onto anything and thus am not making any progression.

Dear World, it's Me

Currently: I want to create something that recreates the serenity in the void of a wave amongst all the energy/tumult in the actual structure without using a literal representation of a wave. But alas, time will not permit creative freedom, for I must create 5 drawings of this structure for Tuesday and I must concede to a curvilinear structure that resembles a wave. And I feel like I'm disappointing myself by not putting in the effort to find a solution that fulfills my need to step away from the wave shape as it is. I need to build more paper models. And I need to get my ass to school. But sleep first. 

Existential Essentials

If I wrote about my annoying influx of melodramatic feelings every time I had an existential crisis, I would have written a multitude of volumes by now.

Question: What's the meaning of life?

I used to think that it was to leave the world a better place than when you arrived. But now I don't think there is an answer. There is no meaning or purpose for our existence. Over the course of a bazillion years, the odds just continuously panned out in our favor and voila! One day, homo habilis came about, and as they say, the rest is history.

I think that people try to assign a meaning to life so that they'll feel more comfortable with existing. In a hundred years, most of us will be nonexistent blips in the History of the Earth, with the exception of marvelously talented people with excellent work ethic who will one day be able to travel backward in time. That being said, Why? Why do we put ourselves through so much agony for lost goals? Why does it matter how much effort I apply in creating each line for a drawing? What can I achieve by waking up before 6:30 to get to school? How much of a difference will my effort make in the long run?

But that's just it, isn't it? Once you lose sight of the minor goals, the larger ones become irrelevant as well. And then your life will start tumbling down the drain. So I guess all the small things matter. All the effort you put into accomplishing small tasks will condition a greater self that can accomplish greater things!

At least I think so. (I'm not quite sure about anything these days)

But I still have no will.

Isn't it interesting how conversation can begin as the answer to one question only to blossom into a multitude of deeper questions? The answer to every question is that there is no answer, only more questions.