BACK, now give me job?

I have lots of odd/lame observations about Hawaii that I will keep to myself for now. Instead I'll just say it was a very relaxing trip and I only managed to get ripped off once (on the rental car). I was also eaten alive by bugs on my last day -- 19 bites at my last count. Some of them are not that bad but about 6 of them are really itchy and keep getting BIGGER! AHH!!

I would never live on Oahu (there are just so many things that I don't agree with there: the weather, the bugs, the distance, the tourists from both America and Japan, the fact that the schools are all next to the freeway, the UGLY road system and their just as ugly proposed rail system, the shit pay that most of the islanders get, even the fact that it's a "crossroads" of cultures has lost its appeal, etc etc) but it did the trick in terms of being pretty (most of the time) and letting me relax. Studio only feels like a distant, unpleasant dream now.

I am also GRADUATED FORREALS since I passed my last class -- got an A-, actually! So I keep my "graduated with honors" status! Not that it matters to anyone besides grad schools...

Anyways...now I need to find a job. Anyone know of anyone looking to hire a girl with a BA from Berkeley who is interested in city/regional planning, community building/organizing, digital design, or event planning? I'll design your business cards if you want....haha. I realized this morning that I have no clue how to go about looking for a job when my contacts don't pull through for me. When's that Alexis Bledel movie coming out? Cause I feel like I'm living it. Ahh!

Finally, A Vacation

I'm leaving for Hawaii today -- be there till Thursday night! woo! I still haven't packed yet though...oops. I gotta leave for the airport in an hour, unless someone wants to drive me!! Why am I behind on everything? 1. I slept in. 2. I decided I HAD to find Norwegian Recycling music and download lots of it =D

Anyways, I am ready for a vacation from all the stress in my life...

Alohaaaaa!

I'm Pretty Much A Rock Star.

B+ in my last studio, bitches!!

I don't know anyone who's ever gotten an A (A- yes, but A? no.) in that class and I didn't even finish the end of my model so I knew I couldn't get an A-, but I did push hard for a B+ rather than a B...and I got it! YES!!!

Sadly, in order to keep my honors status, I have to get an A= in arch 130 and we all know THAT ain't happening......sigh.

PS -- I GRADUATED YESTERDAY.
More on that later.

Finals, Finished.

I finished my last EVER final at Cal this morning!!!! wooohooo!!! I of course had a beer to celebrate at Raleighs aka "Manny's Tap Room". Tonight I cooked dinner for some friends. Then I sat around all alone for the first time in days and it felt nice. Now I am wondering if I should be doing that as I won't be seeing people again after this week. Then it FINALLY started to sink in...I am done with college. Not just done with school or tests, but living with and near my best friends, done with my crazy studio times, done with Dwinelle Hall, done with seeing people all the time, done with bumping into random people....done (or at least geographically separating) with my whole entire network of college pals.

SHIT MAN. I'm not ready for this.

Of course, my initial reaction is to go to sleep and hope I wake up with enough energy to try and figure out how to make time move slower. Also, I am going bathing suit shopping tomorrow. UGGGHHHHH. My top half is fine (too big for triangle tops now =/) but...yeah all I can say is that all photos taken of me in hawaii WILL be from the chest up. That's all.

PS - my roommate, Erin, mysteriously left with our TV this afternoon. She technically owns it but this mean that I MISSED THE SEASON FINALE OF GOSSIP GIRL. This makes for SAD KATIES.

City Car Share, Your Billing System is Flawed

Since day one, I've been less-than-fond of the billing system that City Car Share employes...namely, you don't know how much anything costs until you get a monthly bill for it. Perhaps I should not be cutting things close, but every so often I return a car within one minute of when my reservation ends -- and I never can tell if I'm gonna get slapped with a late return fee ($25) or not. Sometimes I try to call the reservation line (while driving, of course) to extend my reservation and I get told that there are technical errors, etc....and I really don't like having to wait till the bill comes to find out if my rental was an extra $25. If I know I got it in on time, I'm much more likely to make another reservation because I know I can afford it, so really it's in CCS's best interest to have more up-to-date information about how much I'm actually going to have to pay.

At any rate, there are apparently two buildings right next to each other that have car share cars and I've been picking up the car at the WRONG BUILDING. In retrospect this does seem kind of stupid, but I really had no idea. Otherwise, i wouldn't have done it THREE TIMES IN ONE MONTH. I also had no idea that there would be a THIRTY DOLLAR CHARGE each time I did this, until I got my bill today.

I am tempted to complain, but I really did (apparently) take the wrong car each time and usually you can't get your money back due to sheer stupidity. If my bill were displayable on a more of a real-time basis though, I would not have incurred an additional $60 in fees. Also...wouldn't you think that they would make it so you could only unlock the car that you're SUPPOSED to be using?!?!?!?!

Conclusion: I won't be using city car share for the next month or two to recoup my costs. Seeing as how I may be moving out of the bay area in July, I may not be using CCS ever again.

Honesty

I've realized that I am terrible at being honest about what I'm really feeling and communicating it to people. For the most part I am okay at it but I also hold a lot back because I was pretty much raised to think twice (or four times) before opening my mouth, to consider the consequences, other people's feelings, etc. And generally that's a good idea -- people w/o filters can do a lot of damage and hurt a lot of feelings. (Case in point: Thursday night at Skates.)

However...it means I hold a lot back that should probably be said, too. Instead, I'll tell everyone but the person I should be talking to. Eventually I tell the person what needs to be said, but I apparently crave perspective and approval from other sources, and I know that if I am doing something that I don't feel comfortable telling to my close friends, then it is a bad decision and I should stop.

Lately though I seem to be doing (or not doing, as the case may be) a lot of things that I don't disclose to my confidants. Oddly enough, their disapproval isn't going to come because I'm making bad decisions...but because I'm letting someone else make bad decisions that are going to end up hurting me in the end. My rational mind knows this. But there's something that makes me forget all that...and I can't figure out if it's because I want things to work out, or if I'm just kind of giving up on my life at this particular moment. I wouldn't say I'm settling but I can hear my mother telling me I deserve so much more than limbo-land.

God, I'm screwed up. We're all screwed up. I miss the clarity in my life that comes with a singlemindedness that comes from academia. Well, as a friend once mentioned, I guess I am taking comfort in knowing I have miles and miles of shit to learn and grow still.

Helpful anti-study aid: own a DVR.

I'm catching up on Grey's Anatomy on our DVR rather than study today.

Originally I thought the Hunt/Christina storyline was pretty lame but it's grown on me...in that it is incredibly tragic and compelling. Props to him for realizing that he is way too screwed up to be any good for her, even if he loves her...the last guy didn't know how to man up to that kind of shit. Well, they also had to write him off the show ASAP but that's a different story I guess. Despite the fact that I would like to consider myself to be far more capable of showing emotion, the character I usually identify best with is Christina...mostly because I'm no dark and twisty Meredith and I'm no gorgeous Izzie. Or maybe it's cause I wish I was smart and talented and had hair like hers. Or maybe it's just cause she's asian? At any rate, that really sucks for Christina to have fallen for someone who isn't able to treat her the way she should be treated...hey maybe I identify with her because that's how my life is too.


wait wait whoaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa whoaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...I just saw the end of the season finale whoaaaaaaaaa. I just cried. I don't wanna give it away though. So I'm ending here.

Studio: The Aftermath

I've got so many things to write about and process so this is going to be a very fragmented post.

I'll start with a report on Monday: I had the best studio review of my LIFE. Or at least of this semester. I got a really good conversation out of everything and all three of my perspectives generated a lot of talk. My professor said that he would actually WANT to be inside my building if he saw it on the street. My "aunt" was impressed with my stuff too and that was really exciting since I have never allowed her to see my work for fear of her realizing that I am a fraud. Because in the world of architecture, I often feel like I'm just a fraud trying to get by in an environment that I (still) don't know much about. Sigh.

So that was all fine and dandy and I was loving life, feeling like I owned my world (and god what a long time it's been since that's happened) when in the middle of a review I get a call from the Japantown Task Force to inform me that apparently the funding for my job HASN'T come through and so I now no longer have a job. Three weeks before I am supposed tos tart the damn position and they tell me this. I am in disbelief and shock still. And I am very mad for so many reasons -- a major one being that a lot of the jobs and internships that I was looking at had their deadlines 2-3 weeks ago. NOW WHAT THE EFF AM I SUPPOSED TO DO???

More importantly, not having a job turns the whole rest of my life UPSIDE DOWN. Am I going to have to move home? I really hope not -- because going back to Nipomo is almost more than I think I can handle. I get wanting to save money, etc -- but how am I supposed to job hunt in Nipas? THere's NOTHING there. I don't even have a car. And then there is my dream of living in San Francisco. Also, I'm not ready to leave berkeley yet -- so SF was going to be a good transition space for me. And then there is the whole other question of what is going to happen with my personal life.

Ah the personal life...yeah...I don't know what is up with that right now. But if I have to move home then it's all kind of a moot point I guess. The bitter side of me would like to blame things ending on having been fired before I even started this job, but the rational side knows better...

Anyways, all this SHIT has been swimming around in my head.

And then there's the fact that I havent done the rest of my work.

And then there's the fact that I won't see my studio-mates ever again all together. As I was riding BART back from our dinner that we had with our professor in SF, I pondered this and I pondered what wonderfully amazing mess would become of all of us. I could see people becoming professors, famously amazing architects, designers of other sorts, organic farmers, clothing designers, etc etc. Even those of us that go on to a decade or so of mediocrity in architecture would be accomplishing something. Our studio was the most diverse and creative group of people I've ever had the priveledge of working with, and I am so sad that I will no longer be sharing my nights with them. Will I miss all the work involved? Not a ton...but unlike past studios, I don't get to go back to hanging out with my non-studio friends..no...i get to move onto what should be something bigger and better, but currently seems to only be bigger. And scarier.

Tonight's studio reflection was obviously compounded by the memorable-but-not-quite-epic studio party that we had last night. It was a MUCH NEEDED night to let out all of the stress and frustration of the semester. Don't worry, we (mostly) kept it classy...if you don't include the fact that the cops showed up ahaha. In all seriousness, it was really nice to go out and have fun and DANCE and get a little tipsy (but not out of control) and flirt a little bit and not be with "the boy" as Daniella calls him.

I don't think I've blogged about that character too much since I try not to blog about other people. However, I also find writing is an effective way to work out what's going on in my head and in my life. In a nutshell, I'm obviously confused and so is the other party so things just aren't going well. Pretending things aren't awkward gets me nowhere but lately I've been to exhausted to really bring anything up. I don't know why I always let myself give away the upper hand and leave everything up to the guy. This has rarely worked out well for me in the end -- it just leaves me disappointed and hurt or, conversely, frustrated and angry to the point where I just don't want to have anything to do with it. A sense of having been wronged is growing within me -- or rather, I'm realizing that I am not being treated fairly. I have yet to say anything about it though, because my father says that I need to lower my standards for people. I don't think I demand the world though...just because I want the moon and the stars doesn't mean I think I'll actually get it, either.


Oh gosh this has just degenerated into several cryptic thoughts strung together. I think I'll write the rest of this one out by myself.

Oh man here's a random and terrifying thought I just had: It's a known fact that less than half of berkeley architecture undergrads actually go on to be architects. It's also a known fact that surviving studio and the architecture profession (even as an upper middle-class white protestant male) is no easy task. Many of my friends have given up on the idea of becoming an architect. The scary thing I have to ask is this: are all occupations/professions/pursuits as difficult as architecture? We always get mad props for being absolutely insane and stying up all the time at Cal, but I think that becoming an architect is easier than going through med school and various other professional degrees...but now that I think about it some more...I really am not so sure if architecture is a harder thing to pursue than any other occupation. This scares the shit out of me on many levels, the first being that maybe this means I am just lazy.

Sigh. Okay. I'm going to watch some TV for the first time in a while and neglect school for another day.

Nerdy Architectural Thought of the Hour

I think I know why Rem Koolhaas' book was entitled DELIRIOUS NEW YORK.

Clearly, he never got any sleep due to architecture, and thus he expereinced much of it while in a delirious state. DUH.

The fact that I thought this was not silly was enough to make me post it. On second thought though...I think I am the delirious one at this point in time.

How is it 4am?

2.5 hours to finish model so i can shower??

Its times like these that I want to say FML.

Oh Studio.....

I am 14 hours from being DONE WITH STUDIO. WOOOO! We are discussing our past studios a bit as we frantically try to get shit done.

"She left us up shit creek without a paddle" - D re: his 11b GSI.

It makes me seriously question the education we've gotten.


In other news... I AM GOING TO HAWAII AT THE END OF MAY!!!! I pretty much cried when I found out that I am actually going. It was a very good surprise considering the weekend I am having. Wanna come? Book a ticket and I'll see you thereeeeeee


14 HOURS TO FREEEDOMMMMM

So this is life....

I feel like a lot of the "big" moments in my life have been sort of surreal. Prom, graduation week, graduation speech, that last summer at home....it all felt surreal. Perhaps it is because these are no ordinary moments that they felt so un-ordinary? At any rate NSU banquet was no different.

Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, the fact that I had my glasses off, or everyone all dressed up, but everything felt odd. Not awkward..just odd. I basically got kicked out of the senior table by some sophomores and I was so mad at one of my friends that I ended up sitting next to a bunch of first and second years. In my effort not to have an awkward time with one friend, I spent little time with him and found myself talking up all the young folk. Brian's slideshow made me cry and then I got really sad for the rest of the night. Afterwards I had to go to studio and everyone mistook my face of devastation for studio panic...which I honestly should really start worrying more about. I was too tired to work and slept on the floor for quite some time. Ahh.

Now I need to workworkwork and I need food too =/

Can't Get Enough of You

I want to spend all my time with you....for you to be the last thing I see at night and the first thing I wake up to...hold me, keep me warm and safe, and support me when I need it. But alas life has conspired against us and it's taking every ounce of my will power to keep myself from running back to you, damn all the consequences. I keep telling myself that soon we can be reuinted and I won't ever have to leave your presence if I don't want to...but that day seems ages away.

I am, of course, talking to my bed.

Yes, I have gone that crazy. FIVE DAYS UNTIL FINAL REVIEW -- meaning six days until sleeeeeeeeeeeeeep glorious sleeeeeeeeep. I don't think I can sustain 3-4 hrs/night of sleeping. So I guess I need to be more productive w/my time. It's so hard though!! Today I miraculously woke up at 7:30 and MADE IT TO CLASS for the first time in ages, so I am hoping that this is the beginning of a streak of good fortune/unusual willpower/"second wind". Or, today was a teaser and everything will go horribly wrong as usual. We shall see.


EDIT:
I fell asleep 45 minutes after I wrote this..and woke at 7:45. SHIIIIIIIIIIT. On the plus side, I made it to class.

Exclusion by Default

I never really noticed because I haven't attended many events in the Pilipino community until lately...but the Vietnamese community and Pilipino community events always seem to happen at the same time.

I'm feeling torn between supporting a community that I've casually supported for the last three years due to long-standing friendships (SEA/Viet) and supporting a community that has more parallels to the JA community in terms of the struggle for space and immigration histories (in terms of timeline), and that a (newer) close friend is heavily involved in.

I feel like both communities have a lot to share and I have a lot to learn from both of them; both are filled with dedicated, strong personalities, though in their own separate ways.

Sigh.

I hate picking and choosing when I don't know where my priorities should lie.

Reflections

Our interns have to turn in a final reflections essay for the field studies class, so I looked my essay from two years ago up just to see how long the paper was. I read it, and was surprised to see how even though I've had so many life-changing experiences in the last two years, a lot of what I am doing now were encompassed in my hopes and goals that I discussed in the paper.

ES 97

11 May 2007

Final Reflections Paper

This semester when we were given our intern binders, I wrote that I wanted two things out of the intern program: a voice, and confidence in my leadership abilities. My goals were to feel like my opinion is valid enough to stand up for, and to plan an event. Over the course of this semester, I think I have achieved all of these things and then some.

The first event I started to plan was the independent project for the subcommittees, which ended up to be the karaoke social. However, the first “event” that I had a hand in that was executed was core elections, which I assisted Chris in facilitating. In addition to learning basic technical things about running elections (or any meeting), I got to understand what each of the positions required, and it was incredibly rewarding to know that I helped bring everyone together for elections. Election night was an exciting time because we all got to sit down and determine the future direction of NSU. Organizing something that is so important for NSU was a first for me, and at the beginning of the semester I didn’t think I would be doing something like that. In the process I learned how much I really care about NSU. Even though I will not be around next spring and am thus ineligible to run for core, I had a surprising amount of concern for what happens next year, and it has carried over into everything else I am asked or volunteer to do with NSU and the JA community.

Looking back, the trend in my progress seems to be tied a lot to confidence. I had all the things I needed to be a leader, but the confidence required to realize my potential was not there. However, after the biweekly meetings and workshops, I began to see that the things I wanted to do were not so difficult as long as I didn’t drop the ball and kept at it. An example of this is the workshop we did at the intern retreat about sending e-mails. Before this I was definitely a culprit sending rambling, off-topic e-mails that oftentimes lacked cohesion. Once I realized that there are certain things one should and should not include into e-mails, I still had trouble with them: it would take me upwards of forty-five minutes to get an e-mail to say what I wanted it to say while keeping it professional. After some time I realized that the reason why I had such a hard time getting things down to their bare bones was because I didn’t feel comfortable just asking people for something or telling them what I needed of them. Instead of being direct, I was always skirting around the subject and hinting at what I wanted. Naturally, it would take me a long time to get to my point, and oftentimes did not yield the responses I was looking for. By the end of the semester, however, I became assertive enough to be able to do this, and now writing e-mails is no longer a problem for me. Just last night I sent out a mass e-mail to people to announce an event and ask for people to RSVP, and it only took me ten minutes to write. E-mails may seem trivial, but this is a reflection of the greater change that I’ve gone through as a result of the intern program.
Working with all of the other interns and the core members has exposed me to numerous aspects of leadership development, and it has definitely changed my perceptions about who is and isn’t a leader. I didn’t expect some of the interns to have any desire to take on a leadership role, but many of them surprised me, and I did find that there are varying styles of leadership. The biggest illustration of this for me was during our subcommittee project when Eulanca and I worked together: while we are both driven toward the same goal and cared about the event equally, the details we would get caught up on differed. Sometimes it seemed like we were miscommunicating because she would ask me about a snag I felt like I had just fixed, but eventually I came to understand that we just had different methods of dealing with the same problems. I really enjoyed putting on the karaoke event, and felt a good deal of satisfaction when everyone enjoyed themselves, because that is the main point of a social event. At the beginning of the semester I was very hesitant to put on an event for NSU, but with the help of the rest of my subcommittee, it turned out to be a pleasant experience, and it was a lot less daunting than I had originally anticipated.

Within the Japanese-American community, my ideas of who is a leader has been turned around. Many of the leaders we met with seemed to be unlikely leaders – for instance, many Japantown leaders did not grow up in Japantown – and it showed me that in order to be a leader within the Japanese-American community, you just have to step up and demand your spot within the community. While the Japanese-American community at Cal has an open-door policy, you still have to walk through the door. If you have the desire, enthusiasm, and energy, then you can find your spot.

Throughout the course of the semester I was also made much more aware of the scope of the local Japanese-American community in relation to the greater community. Many people talk about the fact that Japantown in San Francisco could very easily die (and I don’t necessarily disagree with that), but if you look at the community I came from, San Francisco’s community is so much stronger and healthier. The issue facing the community in San Luis Obispo county is a lack of youth leadership – much more so than in the Bay Area – due partly to the fact that nobody is encouraging this, and partly because people my age move away to grow up and get an education (myself included) and then oftentimes don’t make it back home. So on one hand this has been an amazing opportunity for me to see what my hometown community could be like – busy and serving the needs of the people in it – and on the other hand I know what it would be like if Japantown were to cease exist. As a City Planning minor, I would really love to become a link between the Japanese-American community and larger planning entities such as the City or the State, because it allows me to do apply what I am learning to do in school to a community that I really care about.

The JA community does not exist in a vacuum, and it must interact with government entities, physical neighbors, and other ethnic communities as well. My involvement with the API community, specifically with the Asian Pacific American Coalition, has illustrated for me the issues that make the JA community different and similar to other communities. I think my involvement with APAC has also forced me to step up as leader because people from other organizations see me as a representative of NSU and the JA community, so I had to start acting like it. Though I was initially intimidated at the AAPI Leadership Summit in January, I’m really glad I have become involved with APAC because so many of the people have inspired me with their energy and drive, and they are willing to help us out and come together in times of need.

Along the same lines, one of the biggest take-aways I’ve gotten out of this experience goes along with what Kristy said during the first J-town site visit about showing up and being at the right place in the right time. Many of the things that we get to do as an organization happens simply because we show up. Among the APAC community, NSU is getting a reputation for always representing itself, which is a reflection of this. For example, many of us came out to the ASUC Finance Committee meeting to petition to get more money from the ASUC; I stayed until past 2:00am, and Colleen and a few others stayed until they got around to deciding about us at 6:00am – on a Tuesday morning. Because we showed up and showed that we cared and were dedicated, we were allotted more than twice the amount of money we were originally budgeted. This is just one example of the type of commitment that leaders within our community have. It’s not necessarily difficult to do this, but a tremendous amount of passion is required to have the dedication to consistently be there.

Going one step beyond this, it is more than showing up. It is having the abilities to see the opportunities that are around you and taking the opportunities. Sometimes it is not so easy to see these opportunities – that’s the hard part. Once you’ve found them, you have to go after them. You can’t just sit there and say you want a chance – you have to go after it and take it. I think that when I said I wanted to develop my own voice, I didn’t mean that I wanted to learn how to sit around and talk about things. I mean, that is the first step and it is nice and all, but what I really wanted to do was to take all of my “I want to do’s” and make them into “I am doing’s”. In many small ways, I am doing that through e-mails, or speaking up in another course I am taking about communities, or taking a critical look at who I voted for during APAC elections. The intern program has been a catalyst for this, but I am by no means a fully developed leader, and I think I am still finding my place within the JA community. However, I am well on my way to getting where I know I can be, and the skills and connections I’ve gained through this course has set me up to be a success rather than a failure.

Some comments:

• I've got no problem sending out direct emails now.
• Am I one of those unlikely leaders now?
• I can't believe I am getting to work in the field of planning AND with my community when I graduate. I never thought I'd get to do that right out of school, let alone get paid for it.
• I keep saying it and hoping people will listen, JUST SHOW UP. I didn't do this today though. What I have learned since 2007 is that if you don't always show up, you have to find it in you to take charge of the situation. "what can I do to fix this?" and "what can I do in the future?" have got to be asked -- right now.
• I can only hope that this year's interns are as empowered as I was at the end of the term.
  

Lines

Last night I got the "just friends" talk.

It made me realize how much I have grown -- my semester in Italy, and my return to California, are probably the reasons for that. I learned that I am fully capable at being a successful individual, but also that I really want to be able to share all that with someone. The little things I see, like the way the sunlight hits the buildings at 5 on a fall day and the things that I laugh at but nobody else thinks are funny, the hopes I have for myself, the crazy ideas I have -- I want to be able to tell someone all of it and have them appreciate (perhaps even love) me for it. And I want to go on that great adventure that is a relationship, and learn all the millions of little things that make someone else tick. I want that person be the first one I call when something exciting happens and I want that person to be the one who helps me get through the tough times.

Now I fully believe that friends are there in the good times and the hard times I know I wouldn't have gotten through this semester without them. But there are some things that, for whatever reason, I am not going to share with my friends and that my friends are not going to do for me. I am realizing that I want -- and deserve -- something more.

Which brings me to the question of what the difference between friends and dating is, where that line is, and when do you decide to cross it? If you date a close friend, then what more are you getting besides sex? And then isn't your relationship based on the physical rather than the emotional? I think my roommate is right, it's a process and not something that suddenly happens. But then I think that certain things can happen that instantly change the dynamics of everything...

Maybe I am just delusional and there never will be that guy who surprises me with flowers in studio or takes me off on some day trip spontaneously or rushes to get to me when he finds out I am upset...maybe trying to find someone that adores me and vice versa is just too much to be looking for. But I really, really hope not.

"We had a lot of fun with this."

Tonight Charles Renfro of Diller Scofidio + Renfro came to campus to speak. We were expecting Liz Diller, but Renfro turned out to be amazing by himself.

His talk was about "The New Black" (ie Green) and I was amazed at how many times he said "we had a lot of fun with this". Architecture does not feel "fun" often enough for me. His proojects reflect this lightness, passion, and overall genius.

Renfro wants to realign sustaianble design with DESIRE. Leed, he says, is "like tithing" - you do it, you feel good about it, and then you forget about it. The buildings don't end up being something you lust after. He thinks (and I agree) that until you bring that desire factor to green design, the American public won't latch onto it. His projects aim to amplify rather than forsake our desires for the sake of green.

A thorougly modern man, Renfro was introduced as being "Breathakingly modern", and he often spoke not just of design or buildings, but of experience and "spectacle". Damn, I like this man.

The major currents I saw in each project were that he thinks aboutspace, experience, etc rather than materials, conventions, or the "how to". A formal language is chosen and it sets the rules -- but ultimately the spacial program and experience comes first. Again, amplifying the experience through the formal language rather than sacrificing it to conform to the language.

I came away from his lecture with this thought: I want to live in the world that Renfro has imagined through his works.

On a very different and unrelated note, I am not sure if ANY of the lecturers this semester were women. THat's why I was really looking forward to Liz Diller.

NOOOOOOO

I am sick. Head aching so badly that hitting it feels good, earache, runny nose, sore throat, SICK. Not the swine flu but it is still coming at THE WORST TIME POSSIBLE IN THE SEMESTER. 10 days to final, 6 days to drawings being due.

I hear it is supposed to rain now too. Great. I want my heat wave back and the viruses gone and situations cleared up and the will to work back. This semester more than ever, small shit just keeps popping up and putting things over the edge to the point where I can't seem to keep up, let alone get ahead. I want to feel like a super star and in control of my life for more than half an hour at a time!

I just need to remember that nobody can do this but me. Nobody will draw my drawings, do my laundry, go get groceries, make sure I wake up. I know people will help me as best they can but I need to also realize that they cannot and will not do everything...I am capable and I am tired of shit coming into my life that turns everything into a series of excuses.

Things I should be prioritizing besides "studio":
-Getting some sort of tangible work done, as in not getting lost in details
-GOING TO FUCKING CLASS.
-Hydration, nutrition, hygiene
-Sitting down and WORKING.
-Not whining at friends too much or (conversely) ignoring them
-Clearing up bad situations.
-Remembering to pay my bills this month (I somehow forgot to pay 2/3 of them last month).

Socializing, NSU, graduation details, etc you are not high on the priority list even though you are much higher on my desires list...

I CAN DO THIS.

Roddy told me so!

Clear Air // Panic Attack Is Coming Soon

Today I went to Jtown to act like a young professional and cleared the air with my old employer. It proved once again that a) most mistakes are recoverable b) talking face to face rather than silence and avoiding and feeling guilty = always better.

Now I can breathe okay.

Guys, I am graduating and I have a JOB. How did that happen?! The insanity of how lucky I am is starting to hit me. I keep waiting for the "just kidding" phone call.

In other news, final requirements for my final review on May 11Cth were posted. Panic to happen soon:
1:20 model
1/4 scale model

DRAWINGS:
site plan
Floor Plans (4 since there are 4 floors)
Sections (3 minimum, I'll probably do 4)
Perspectives (2 interior, 1 exterior)
"vignettes" - 4 (basically more perspectives)
Diagrams (4)
Conceptual Cut drawing (elevation and section)


I don't know what m y conceptual cut is going to show.
I do not have an updated rhino model and what's worse is I really suck at rendering and perspectives.
I would be very happy if information could be easily gathered from just plans, sections, elevations and models -- I enjoy all of those -- but this isn't 11B, is it?

Days until I need to be done with drawings: 8.


PS I think I know what I want but I am too afraid to go after it. I need to start practicing the confidence that I try to inspire my friends to have...

Not Everyone Has To Save The World

Alex was right.

Just go out there and try to do something you love.

If you can't do that or don't know what that is...just keep trying.

I truly believe that eventually we all get it right (or right enough).


THis would be a much more nuanced post but I have shit due in 8 hours that I haven't started.

Lost?

There has been so much going on since spring break...every day is a new high and a new low it seems. I can only hope that I get through my classes with minimal damage...and I've got to stop having a social life, it seems. I'm almost done with my NSU duties and then i can hopefully breathe easier -- even though I will miss NSU a lot.

This is super vague cause there is just too much to sort out and too much that isn't clear yet...perhaps that is my problem. I may have grown up a little in college, but having a voice is still hard for me. I know that there are many ways to have a presence, but it's still difficult sometimes.

Well, here's to catching up...

Why Am I Still Up?

It's 2:40am and I have to be at the rental car place by 7:30am. It wasn't until midnight that someone's comment made me realize that life has fallen apart on me this week.

Life has fallen apart so many times this semester, it doesn't even seem to phase me anymore.

All that keeps me going is knowing that I am 3 weeks to finishing studio, and (again) my amazing amazing friends. I feel badly knowing I'm continually having to ask them for favors and rely on them, but I am eternally grateful for them. There are a lot of things that are making it hard to be hopeful but I am really, really trying to remain positive. I don't have TIME to be frustrated at or disappointed with people and I need to learn that people aren't obligated to live up to the standards of excellence that I think they should.

Some more things on my to-do list:
A night with scones, tea, movies and blankets.
Re-visiting the spanish tapas bar that 'Risa and I went to in the Mission. I am CRAVING PAELLA!

Culture Shows vs Architecture Lectures

PCN was this afternoon -- and Toyo Ito was this evening.

I should have trusted my instincts and skipped the Ito lecture, even though my prof would have been disappointed. He'll be more disappointed that my work didn't get done.

Despite some of the shortcomings of the dramatic development in two of the theatrical pieces, PCN was a professional show that sought to bring up issues that aren't always talked about and showcase the many wonderful talents of its participants -- all while resisting the urge to say "this is what being Pilipino is all about". Because no one (or set of) stereotype does not define a community -- and who's to say PAA is the gatekeeper of PA culture?

Orchestra!
Singing!
Spoken Word!
Comedy!
Dance of various types!

Worth every minute of it.



I fell asleep in the architecture lecture.


I am entering crippling panic mode and don't know what to do -- we are ALL panicking. I forgot that easter is tomorrow so I need to bum modeling materials off of people.

Some More Random Short-Term Goals

1. PLAY DAY / PHOTO SHOOT IN SAN FRANCISCO. I might just make that the theme of the transitions retreat. All I know is I need to get inspired -- I went to SF yesterday for business and just the people on the BUS were more interesting than anything I've seen in Berkeley in the past few weeks. People in SF have STYLE.

2. ITALIAN FILM DAY. I haven't seen La Meglio Gioventu in a while. If you want to spend a day watching it with me and drinking tea, please let me know. It's a 6 hour movie, all in Italian, but it is a BEAUTIFUL story and every time I watch it I find something new about it. Plus, the men in it are HOT. I usually try to watch it without the subtitles, but if you don't speak Italian I'll gladly turn them on.

--

In other news....life's been super busy and I don't have time to write much (I've even blocked Facebook) -- but --

I got the job!!

It's with the japantown task force -- economic development, planning and preservation work, before you can ask. It's located in San Francisco so now I get to search for housing in SF!

YES!

This week has been FULL of ups and downs. So many things are trying to get me down, sad, and further behind in school. I am committed to not falling behind though...until I hit about 4am that is, then I just seem to give up.

Anyways, let's focus on the positives:
Yesterday my friend Niki gave birth to Praxedis Escobar. It was a natural childbirth! For many reasons I truly admire Niki, even though I do not know her well. She is a talented artist, a vegan, and lives life on her own terms. She is going to be a great mother who gives Prax a beautiful life. Normally I am not all that baby-centric, but when I heard about her giving birth last night, I couldn't stop smiling and getting excited. At a time when I am watching my great grandfather leave this world, Prax's entrance into it served as a powerful reminder of the dualities of life and death, and the "everyday miracle" that we create when children are born.

I was able to get a lot of my anxieties/fears/frustrations out thanks to my friend Annies. I truly appreciate her lending me an ear, especially now that things are not going so great for her.

I have two appointments that I am very much looking forward to this week. One of them is actually not that important but the other one is a SECOND INTERVIEW for a real paying JOB!!!! I totally didn't think that I was still being considered for the position...so I was surprised to get a phone call asking me to come into their office and see what's going on and get all my questions answered. I am trying not to get too excited, but I can't help it. Jobs seem to be really hard to come by in this area, and this one definitely matches my professional interests. It is located in San Francisco's Japantown, which is a double-edged sword since I haven't done my best to impress people there in the past. But it is nice to think that after getting to know the community and devoting a lot of time and energy there, the community is now, in its own way, helping me out when I need it and extending yet another opportunity to me.

It's crazy how much shit can be thrown at you while at the same time so much good is happening too! Let it never be said that April is a boring month!!!

The Sky Is Crying

I had no clue it was going to rain today.

I did have a clue about how my great grandfather has been doing but I just found out that right now he is en route from the hospital to his home. In an ambulance. I can't help but wonder if the next time he leaves his home, it will be in something that doesn't have sirens and lights...which is what makes the other things I did today bittersweet: I bought my graduation announcements, my cap and gown, and my honors cords.

Like many students, my collegiate accomplishments were aided greatly by the love and support of my family, and I always thought my g-grandpa would be there when I graduated. (more about what I hoped he would see out of me to come at a later time -- I don't want to start crying in studio.) Graduation is a time of excitement and celebration, but there are a lot of unhappy things going on at the same time...so at 11:30 I was feeling accomplished and excited and I really wanted to share that with someone, but couldn't because everyone is in class...and when I called my mom...it vanished. Now everyone wants to know why I look like a truck hit me.

I'm struggling to find the motivation to do any school work right now, and I already fucked that part of my life up enough in the past week...I want a hug from my mom and some tea and a blanket.

Shit, I haven't even begun to sort through the other possible mess/possible yay that's in my life.

When did that happen?

I read my posts for the last year and came to some interesting conclusions.

1. I don't write this for an audience or have any photos on here. Is that bad? I don't know.

2. Last semester seemed so great and easy (in my memory) but re-reading I realize that it was difficult for some vast and nebulous reasons. I totally went MIA over break and now I know why -- the pattern, the hopelessness, and the burnout are easy to spot in the fall posts.

3. Any style that I once had has disappeared this semester. ALl my posts from studio are just boring recounts of the drudgery I'm going through. I think I literally turned off parts of my brain when I shut out all the miscellaneous things that weren't studio related. I don't write poetry anymore and I don't have my witty sarcasm. Maybe I really should start "don't build this" and work on that last part. All I know is I am capable of writing some pretty "good" things and none of them happened in 2009. I would like to think that 2009 in general isn't just a shitty year though.

4. I am back on an irregular body rhythm. Sleep at 5 wake at 2pm. It's just like Italy last year! Except, I won't have the same wake-up call that throws me back onto normal civilized time again. Maybe I will just have to make it happen. Sound cryptic? You have no idea.

Which leads me to mentioning that maybe the reason why I haven't posted anything decent this year is because I am keeping too much inside. For instance....stuff that happened on Friday and Saturday are weighing heavily on my mind: what do I do? Do I start something or wait for everything else to start for me? And who can I go to for advice??? It's killing me not being able to really dissect this with others, but I can't decide if I should tell anyone or not. The keepers of my secrets don't seem so trustworthy any more. I think I know what I want but I am struggling to pass my courses so I don't know if I have time for anything else. It's times like these that I wish I wasn't so distant from my sister or closed-off from my mother on these topics.

Crap, I only know one way to deal with things that I can't stop thinking about and it involves talking it over. There are no sympathetic ears at 3am though.

Daydreaming

Part of me wishes I could go back to just being obsessed with How I Met Your Mother. It's a lot easier to be addicted to a world that's laid out for you, always there when you need a laugh or a break. Real life is not that way and the things on my mind are severely distracting me from getting my work done. Normally I would just DO SOMETHING about it but school NEEDS to come first.

I think I need to read THE PROCASTINATOR'S HANDBOOK by Rita Emmit again. Except, Rita doesn't have any advice for all the things that are on my mind.

On a much sadder note, I am not sure how much longer my great-grandfather is going to last in this world. He's in the hospital again; my mom is there with him. I haven't seen him since Christmas.

Random thoughts...

I keep saying I should start a blog called DON'T BUILD THIS and talk about all the random truths and isms we learn at 4am in studio. It'll be really great!

From the outside looking in, do I seem "artsy" on the basis of my major? My self-image doesn't quite line up with that, but then I look around my room and I think maybe I am, but in a superficial way. Case in point: I love taking photos but know nothing about technical photography stuff. It's always been on my "to do when I have time/money" list. More importantly...do I like being associated with all the connotations of an arch major? It's a little late to wonder this, I guess.

I went to the CSA culture show tonight. It's not big and flashy like PCN/VSA but it gave me a lot to think about, and I'm glad that they went to all the effort to have the show. CSA has a tough job -- what does it mean to be "Chinese American"? I couldn't tell you the answer but I imagine that it's pretty difficult to figure out and then present in one show, because China has so many sub-cultures, ethnicities, dialects, etc. There are some generalizations in terms of immigration patterns, but even so...much more than Japanese Americans or Vietnamese Americans, I can't imagine how you'd be able to quintessential-ize the Chinese American experience. But rather than say that Chinese/Chinese Americans are TOO different or are TOO similar, the members of CSA decided to tell a story that was representative of what they saw fit to tell. Rather than fit into all of the stereotypes of the med/law school-focused students, these folks put in the hours and effort to do this showcase, which speaks volumes to the types of diversity and tensions that exist within Chinese American culture.

I laughed when the main character was super cheap with his girlfriend, because I've had friends that were the same way, and I never could really totally understand it.

I wish studio was freakin done -- this time because well, dammit, it's April and that means culture show season and I want to see them all and have dinner with everyone I know all the time and hang out and savor every last moment as a student. Instead I either need to get way more organized (ie drag myself out of bed, stop watching hulu, etc) or become a complete social recluse.

I thought rendering was gonna be cool but it's not. It takes fucking forever and I'm scared it's going to crash my computer....

Travel Bug

My desires to travel and see new things has grown in intensity again! I am seriously considering going on a trip somehwere right after graduation (or right after my lease runs out) and putting it all on my credit card and paying it off.....later. I mean I have no money but I am also pretty unattached so it's the perfect time to travel. I think it will, among other things, help me do some soul searching to figure out what I want to do -- because right now I think I want to go into something that's pretty non-traditional (as in, no arch firm, etc -- some sort of a startup instead).

I have been reading all these stories of people in massive debt over things like clothes and shit and so every time I go to buy something I ask myself "would I think it was worth it if I couldn't pay my bills because i bought this?". Usually, it seems frivolous, although Barney Stinson may say otherwise. The only thing I will spend money on w/o thinking is food right now. But a trip...that might be worth it?

Tops of my list:
NYC
Japan
Peru
Brazil
London
Spain
Hong Kong
Mumbai
Paris

So please weigh in: frivolous or worth it?

At "Home" Once Again

It took me all weekend to find a space where I feel like I can work productively....but I finally have my desk set up just right. Tall desk in studio, check. Good light, check. Water, check. Caffeine, check. Goldfishes (albeit stale), check. Sun is down, check. I'm also kind of perching on this stupid studio chair (I know...) and hoping my back won't give out on me tonight.

I've got my tunes on too (Jack's Mannequin station on Pandora) -- btw I just discovered this artist called OWL CITY...their album cover looks SUPER cheap (done in photoshop in about 5 minutes) but I can see how it sells with the high school crowd.

I think I'm done wishing I didn't have to leave home and my do-only-what-I-want lifstyle...for tonight anyways.

Navigating the World

Below is what I had to turn in for one of my classes on Design Theory and Criticism. It's abour 3x too long for what the prof wanted, but 3x too short for what I could have said. At any rate, go out and read Koolhaas' "Architecture and Globalization" and think about it in terms of the current situation. I think this has gotten as close as I can get to expressing why, on one hand, graduating in 2009 is filled with opportunity and more possibilities than ever before, but on the other, figuring out how to naviagte the world as a "global citizen" seems impossible at times.

Architecture is “being subjected to movements going in absolutely opposite directions: one direction is globalization and the other is…a kind of regionalization. I think it is a wrenching movement, a tension and a torsion between an expansion of perspective on one hand, and an implosion of perspective, on the other hand.” – Rem Koolhaas, “Architecture and Globalization”

Koolhaas hits on a current that seems to run through the discourse in many circles. We seem to live in an increasingly globalized society, as Thomas Friedman’s _The World Is Flat_ and Robert Reich’s _Supercapitalism_, amongst many others, will attest to. At the same time, all over the globe, a renewed interest in all things local has popped up. In Italy, wines and foods are considered more “pure” if they are produced by traditional means and in the same regions that they originated from; locally-grown organic foods and the Slow Food movement have gained popularity in many parts of the industrialized world; and in America, cultural preservation, in the form of interest in ethnic foods, customs, and practices, is particularly important.

Translating this into architectural discourse, postmodernism has produced an attraction toward “regionalist” or “vernacular” architecture in order to give spaces context, but it is also happening at a time when location is becoming increasingly unimportant. Being in San Francisco versus being in Shanghai is not so important as much as being able to communicate and move goods/ideas/resources between these places is. But while the Global North becomes increasingly connected, the gap between the “First” and “Third” worlds seems to be as wide as ever, with billions of people living in poverty. Geographical distance is not so much what defines these distances as do income and consumption power – Tijuana, by many standards, is a Third world city, but San Diego is one of the most rapidly growing areas of California; even within the same city both of these extremes exist (as they do in the critically acclaimed film “Slumdog Millionaire”).

It is no wonder then that Koolhaas was shocked to realize that he had artificially divided the world into areas of architectural possibility and impossibility, because in many instances there seem to be irreconcilable differences between the dialectics of today’s world. However, the ability for Manhattan-esque forms to be built all over the world exists in opposition to these divisions. These differences are reminiscent of Lefebvre’s conception of the “everyday” and its tension between oppressive monotony and the potential for change and revolution within the same framework. The “gulf” between what Koolhaas was teaching and what his students were experiencing, and between the “real Japan” and the “true ambitions of Japanese culture” are further evidence of this tension, which I think is what Sklair is trying to talk about when he says that there are real implications in terms of experience for the “global spaces” that are location-independent. It’s difficult to say that location can be completely taken out of the equation when trying to understand the built environment, because local influences such as politics, economics, and cultural practices do create different experiences and meanings, even if the same shopping mall is built in Singapore and in Texas.

Spring Break

It's almost over!

I don't want to go back to school though.

I had a good time at home though. California is beautiful and I love my room at home. I also love just hanging out in my apartment...watching NPH...and eating tasty food. I'm sooooo dragging my feet with getting back to my school work. I have 6 weeks till I'm done with studio, and a few days after that, graduation. So much will change between now and then and as always my heart is torn between getting through this as fast as possible and savoring all the "lasts" and good moments.

Anyways, there were no exotic cruises, trips to europe, or traipsing around NYC like I wanted, but that's okay...it was still a very much-needed break.

Money Honey

I get the impression that my father doesn't think I am going to make enough $$ when I graduate (or rather that I'll be underpaid). "Nonprofit" is almost a taboo word. Well I hate to break it to you daddy, but that's all your doing. You raised me with an amazing sense of community and family, an appreciation for the landscape, the value of hard work without pay, and being selfless. I make do with what I have, and when I need more I find a way to make it happen, but normally I realize that it is not really the material things in life that matter.

One of my classmates seems to have complete opposite values from me. She'd rather take a job she hates as long as it pays a ton (and by a "ton" i mean almost the equivalent of what my family brings in each year, but for a single-person household), so she can have time off to do something extravagant. While I want to travel the world too, I spend MORE of my time working and I want to do something that MEANS something to me. And I don't need to jet off all the time because I have family and friends to be with. [This is perhaps why my lack of a love life and my inability to find someone to share my life with is so disheartening for me.] I've never truly wanted for anything...and yet this person's basic living expenses for the year cost more than double what mine do. Is my life radically less privileged than hers? In most respects no. I can't say for sure because I don't have her life, but I'm willing to bet that in many respects mine is far richer.

So this is why I am kind of disgusted right now. Somewhere there is probably a seed of jealousy in me, but I was definitely surprised to find that my initial and overwhelming reaction to someone "needing" that much money to be utter ridiculous.

Education....seems to be low-priority.

First, I am freaking out over job prospect(s). But more on that later. The education stuff, which makes me sad, comes from the fact that LMUSD sent out a TON of pink slips to teachers this past week and a bunch of people showed up to the board meeting to discuss it. An NHS alum sent out a message about the meeting, and this is part of what he had to say:

The fact of the matter is this, we live in a society that weighs entertainment, and military over education. If you want someone to blame, blame the community, start with yourself. When was the last time education was a on the top of your political agenda? The truth is that the congressional districts 22 and 23 have long sat silent while our teaching staff has been underpaid and under-appreciated .

APparently some people are just on witch hunts, trying to place the blame on anything they can. But this guy is right - we have sat silent too long. Education has always been at the top of my short-lived political agenda, which probably speaks to my age more than anything else, and I have long been more than a little conflicted over the state of our K-12 and higher ed system - I feel like it fails to really reach so many students, but at the same time it's under-funded. And teachesr that are not so great probably had a not-so-great education in the first place - lovelyyy cycle. But despite my reservations and frustrations, I've never really voiced it in a public/constructive manner.

More thinking to follow over spring break. Right now I need to do studio work, study for a midterm, and decide on a job...

Weekends?

I miss those...

Only two weeks until I can sit in the sun on the beach and then SLEEP IN ON A WEEKEND. Without feeling guilty.

Daylight savings time robbed me of an hour of my Sunday and will make me late for everything else for the next month. The longer days, while taunting me while in studio, also remind me why I don't know if New York will ever really work out for me. I love long afternoons and warmth - visual and in terms of temperature - and need to live somewhere with short winters and short summers, because fall/spring are where it's at.

What If

What if you were Muslim but wanted to join the US military? Or if there was a draft and you were Muslim and drafted in? How would you and your family feel? How would your commander feel? Your peers? How would they treat you?

I'm not really sure what sparked that particular train of thought.


I sometimes feel like shit for having the privilege to criticize our involvement in wars and the president (former and otherwise) and not really paying much attention to what is going on in all of those things when I know some of the people who are laying their lives on the line to protect us, our safety, our freedom of speech, and our ways of life. I take their efforts for granted some (most) of the time. And my soul wonders....what do they think of me?

Still working

Here's something I'm continually struggling with: getting overwhelmed. I don't want to get overwhelmed so I don't read e-mails or start my work or whatever - basically I procastinate. Then I've procastinated to the point that when I do start, I've run out of time and I'm overwhelmed because I started so late.

My intentions have gotten progressively better on this front - at least I'm aware of my own tricks now - but it's something that I still need to work on.

I'm off to start my reveiw post-mortem.

Late-Night Playlist

My late-night playlist on Pandora includes:

Britney Spears' last two albums
Timbaland
Lady GaGa's album
Kanye's 808s, Stronger
CALABRIA 2007 by Enur
MGMT's Oracular Spectacular album
Christina Aguilera
Katy Perry's One of the Boys album
Kylie Minogue
Rhianna
PCD

......basically super classy music that I don't have to think about but isn't too mellow that I fall asleep, either.

Togetherness

I'd say I definitely do not have my shit together these days - which is ok. I'll figure it out, one day at a time. But I'd also say that's one of the reasons why I doubt I'll actually be able to date someone that I actually like (erh....date in general). Talent and passion and big dreams - those are some of the qualities I value most in a person. But getting a person who's on a trajectory for success to stick with you is hard when you're floundering around yourself.

Hmm. On further thought, I think it comes down to my inner confidence (not self-confidence in the way of "how do I carry myself" or whatever, a much more subconscious thing). I'm still not confident enough to feel like I've got it together....because on a rational level I know I am by no means a failure or even an underachieving human being. I've done a fair bit of things with my life and I've done it in a way that is respectable and virtuous...I care about things...etc. Stupid higher-ed microcosm and design school just makes me feel about two inches tall.

Wow, I just realized I am full of contradictions and paradoxes - similar to Henri Lefebvre's "everyday". Damn you Arch 130.

Sreepy

I slept 16 hours yesterday, but I'm still about to fall asleep at 2am, because those 16 hours were supposed to make up for a week's worth of sleep deprivation. Ughhh. It doesn't help that everyone else is dropping like flies too. I should have gone to studio to work but I am hoping that this helps my back out.

I'm trying to prioritize my health and well-being a little bit more, but nobody at home is really able to help me with my design decisions, of which there are a million to make. Everyone always wonders why I suck at deciding what I even want to eat but I'm pretty sure it's cause I make a zillion decisions each day and I am just tired of making them. Also, it's food and I eat it all the time so it doesn't matter much what I eat - I'll get a chance to eat something differente in a few hours.

I wonder where my sketchbook is. I hope it's happy and warm and that I didn't write anything too mean about anyone in it.

PS - I started using Pandora today. Its Vista widget crashed my computer, but after turning it off I haven't had any problems. I have figured out that I like Moby's stuff from the late 90s/early 2000s a lot.

Just Do It

Someone needs to follow me around all the time and say "Katiez, just f*ing do it." I try to be more efficient w/my time and I only end up wasting it; I should have just done things the "longer" way and been done with it.

But my back...it hurts SO MUCH from sitting on studio chairs. If I bend over it hurts. If i walk it hurts. If i sit on most things, it hurts. THe doctor will tell me to stop sitting so much, and on a better chair, and to exercise more. The only one of those things I can do is go buy a new chair at Ikea, I guess.

All you need is love

I was looking through someone's wedding photos on facebook and they almost moved me to tears. Whenever I get married I don't want the big fairytale princess wedding or dinner at the Hilton. I want something small and filled with friends and family (which...is actually pretty big. hmm. I'll have to reconcile that.) and simplicity. Not a hoe-down at the farm though. And it will be brimming with love, rather than parade. Not just love between me and my spouse but love between all of us...

Seems pretty obvious, but after years of TLC and Style Network shows on wedding preparations, I'd begun to think that weddings were about something else altoghether. I thought I'd like to get married in some cool looking place, like a pretty beach, or Venice, or Spain, or someplace I've never been but always wanted to go. THat way I could a) travel and b) associate that place with an incredible memory. But really...if I can't have that WITH all of the people who love and support me, then it's not worth it.


Why am I even thinking about this...I need to be making a building...and I don't even have anyone to date, let alone marry. *Entering land where I remember that my mother was engaged before she graduated from college and I am graduating in 3 months...*

Secret

Here's something I'm not sure I should be saying publicly:

I think I might want to be an architect after all.

This studio is the HARDEST thing I've done in college but it is also one of the most rewarding things. Perhaps I am a masochist. But I am really starting to like designing again. Whether or not I can see myself doing this as a serious career, I'm not sure yet. I still wonder...am I romanticizing the profession? Cause I definitely could be. And I can't help but wonder: if I do go into architecture, will I regret not givign planning a proper try? Part of me also says I shouldn't pursue architecture because I didn't take classes that will get me into grad school. But I hear the portfolio is the thing that really gets you in. (I don't have a good one...but...I could probably get some help with that, right?).

AHH.

This is a bad time to have an identity crisis.

Must must must focus on studio work.

Because I need to do well in this regardless of what I do.





Giada and her huge mouth is making bollito misto. mmmm. Perhaps I'll just move back to Italy and marry an Italian man and become BFF with his mamma. Except she'll hate me cause I'm not Italian, so that will probably not work well...

Chronofile

My arch theory + criticism prof talked about Buckminster Fuller's chronofile today - he basically kept every piece of correspondence, reciept, pamplet, etc etc that he had for a number of years - all of the stuff he called "ephemera". It's been described as a great tool for seeing how the designer lived and his ideas, but I have to wonder: does it capture the important parts of his experience?

I got thinking about this because I have a penchant for keeping ticket stubs, maps, handouts, flyers, etc much more so than I should. Every few years I throw most of it out though, forcing myself to let all the "important" pieces stay - provided they fit into one box. It's a good way of purging before I move. But do those things really get into how I lived and what I thought? And would there be a better way of chronolizing my life??

All of the "ephemera" is, in my case, capable of being highly misleading. If I want to forget something that I did or decide that this concert I attended would not send the right message to anyone going through my box of stuff, I'll probably get rid of it. It is, as much as anything else I have, another way of selectively presenting my experiences to the world. It's the same reason why customizing my binder in high school was so important and yet so difficult - I had to acquire enough clippings and photos that showed me as having cool-but-obscure interests, good taste in tv/men/music, and most importantly, lots of close friends that adore me.

Now if I decided to keep absolutely everything like Fuller did, maybe this would be different. It could serve as a tool for SELF-analysis: now that I can see everything that the world would consider as evidence of my existence, does my inner image match my outer image? (But which would I need to change to get them to match?) As a tool for historians and others to analyze my ideas though...I still am not convinced that it would do a very good job.

What about photography? I chose snapshots as the primary way of documenting my semester abroad, taking over 3500 photos in the process. Most of them don't mean much to anyone though; to me, they are capable of bringing up memories that fade in my mind as well as finding new things that blended into the background while I was there, but are now of interest to me. I failed to document most of the PEOPLE I was with though (human subjects always make me shy) and those are the things that made up the bulk of my time there...

I think a combination of word and image is best, but I rarely take the time to combine the two and synthesize my experiences. I have great ideas for short essays and reflections while I'm walking but I rarely remember them by the time I get to a place where I can type/write/draw...I should work on this.

status updates

Facebook status updates are something that sometimes just reflect what I'm up to at the moment, but usually have an inflection of my tone/mood for the day. And sometimes I spend way too much time thinking about the statement that I'm sending with it: do I want to tell one person something, or do I want to tell everyone something, or do I want everyone to know I'm telling one person something? Do I want to provoke inquiries into my life, invite some pity, and throw out a feeler to see just who is paying attention to me?

In all reality nobody really cares what I'm doing but I fancy the idea of them caring so I have to craft it in a way that makes someone care, or at least makes me feel clever. And then there are the times where I get to a place where I can't talk to any of the people I want to say things to and spend a lot of time actively censoring myself.

Katiez...

...is sorry she is selfish.

...is disappointed with what she's done with this year and sorry she's let so many people down.

...is most disappointed that people don't even realize their unmet potential.

...fought her instinct to be motherly toward her friends and won.

...is ashamed that she chose to leave. But can't handle you.

...feels like she's living in parallel realities from one day to the next.

...wishes that there was something there.

...misses life one and two years ago.

...is engaged in several acts of self-preservation.

...needs a therapist now, not on the good and boring days.

...is scared because she's lacking that fire.

...is scared because there seem to be no big prospects for her life.

...also thinks its ridiculous that she feels that way when she should really be brimming with possibilities.

...just wants to scream at you.

...knows that she's frustrated because of differences in maturity levels.

...is anxious over all the stuff she's gonna have to do if she really did lose her phone.

...hopes you read this.

Dinner Date

I'll buy you dinner if you help me cut out my stuff tonight. No really. I've got a ton of cutting to do and it's really easy...just takes me a while.

On the topic of food:
1. Safeway's cheese risotto boxed stuff is DELICIOUS. I made 3 meals out of that and some asparagus and a tomato. omnomnom
2. I've pretty much given up on coffee. It just makes me extra anxious and I don't like being a part of the coffee commodities supply chain... Now tea on the other hand....or Coca Cola...that's another story.
3. My roomie made the best heart cookies last night!!

This is what I have in studio as far as food goes:
1 Fruit snacks (thanks brianz/ryan)
1 Bag organic semisweet choco chips
2 1L SmartWaters
2 cans of Campbell's chicken noodle "healthy request"
6 packets EASY MAC (ugh)
1 Bag toasted ritz: garlic & mozzerella
3 Oranges (I wish they were blood oranges tho)
various snack sized 100 calorie packs of chips and cookies
1 VitaminWater (energy)
1 VitaminWater (essential)
2 slices of bread
1 prepackaged celery/carrot/tomato combo
1 box green tea
1 nutrigrain bar
1/2 bag trail mix

It's an excessive amount of packaging but it's relatively nutritious and not susceptible to spoilage, so yay me!

Now that I've made a list that doesn't stress me out, I can begin working on my stuff again.

Beautiful Day

It is a truly gorgeous day outside today! This is CRAZY weather for January but I prefer the sunshine to any other kind of weather, so I really wish I could be outside right now. Pismo must be amazing and I'm fantasizing about what I could be doing there. There is a picture up in my studio of my mom, grandmother and myself on the Rialto in Venezia. It was blazingly gorgeous that week, the first week it hadn't been raining a lot.

I wish I could be there: Venice, the coast, with my family, outside. Any of those places.

I'm a little conflicted though; the lack of rain is going to hurt the ag industry...which not only affects my family's livelihood, but so many other things and people and places. Global warming is shitty like that.

Bipolar

Sometimes I think I might be mildly bipolar. Sunday/Monday I was a huge mess over studio and life....the worst I've EVER been....but Tuesday and Today I was totally fine. I scared everyone and then scared them again by suddenly being okay again. I don't think I'm actually bipolar though...I just felt like there was no hope and no way out of my situation until I talked to a friend and realized that I just have to get through things and take it all one day at a time. Which isn't the first time I've heard it, but coming from this particular person it finally resonated with me.

Anyways, this is going to be a very difficult semester thanks to studio. I'm told that I need to not feel guilty over calling on my friends for support when I need them so I am going to try to not feel guilty about it. Even though I think I dump too much crap on some of my friends as it is.

Somehow my econ homework took me like five hours to do this week. WTF it's beginning Microeconomics!! I think my brain is wired for macro instead.........time to learn how to "think differently" even if I feel like I might be thinking stupider. Ah well I'd rather feel stupid than worthless.

And this is going up so that I remember it later....I stayed in Wurster for 21 hours Tues/Wed and was up for 30 hours before taking a 3 hour nap and then heading off to NSU's first gen. Needless to say I was so out of it at the meeting (apologies!!). I do not think that it justifies the terrible amounts of sleep that I lost, but my one model turned out to be very instructive and the professor didn't throw it into the FAIL PILE. He literally has a fail pile. Well, it's called the "Danger Zone" but we all know he means FAIL PILE. I had a productive failure.

I did not get the other two models done though. I do not consider this epic fail though because for once in a long time I really did try my best.....it's so disappointing to have pulled 2 all-nighters in the second week of studio though. I want to become one of those people who doesn't pull all-nighters!! So I guess I need to stop doing NSU, stop watching any tv or youtube or anything ever, steal someone's creative genius, become a morning person, not procastinate, and impose (and follow!) a bedtime. Basically, I have to stop being me...

Misery Loves Company

Company also stops me from crying uncontrollably, which I spent too much of my evening doing.

Sighhhhh. I can't write much because I MUST FINISH ASAP...I want to go home...and I have no clue how long plotting will take me. Nonetheless...I will just say that studio is stressing me out more than necessary and I am not sure why. I do know it's not okay and once I get through this drawing I am going to seek a solution of some sort to ease all the anxiety and stress I've got. Tonight I found temporary aid in the form of amazing friends coming to help me stop freaking out. I feel bad for taking them away from their comfy apartments for a few hours, but their presence was a lifesaver so I am glad to have the friends that I do.

Ok this is too long. I can analyze why I'm reacting terribly irrationally to the events in my life during 130 lecture.

Welcome Back to Architecture School.

Oh man life has been happening away from the blog. Actually, I sat around and did nothing for the break but I was too lazy to even blog about that. I got myself into a fair bit of trouble for not checking my e-mail/phone/communications during break but I think I've recovered from them.

School has begun again and I'm having a terrible time. I tried to approach studio positively but I barely even got in off of the waitlist and the professsor has really made me feel like I do not belong there. I am realizing now that 100A in the summer was an easy studio but it didn't prepare me at all for this one. Luckily, Rhino is really easy to pick up thanks to my cad skills (it even has PREDICTIVE TEXT COMMANDS how awesome is that??). Unluckily, I've gotten out of practice of designing things. So for the past two days I've been walking around on edge, feeling like my inside (or rather my confidence) is crumbling faster than this nation's infrastructure, hoping that I can build a rope ladder fast enough to get me out of the giant hole I'm in - fast enough to get out without all the rain filling it up and drowning me, since I can't really swim.

Well that was an interesting metaphor.....too bad I'm better with words than images. What I mean to say is that I am not feeling hopeful because I've let fear take over and everywhere I go I feel guilty for not working on my projects, but panicked because when I sit down to do my project I won't have any ideas. I'm coming off as really distant to most of my friends who are all...enjoying life before graduation. Which I will finally be able to do, come May 11th.

On a different note (one that contrasts w/studio so much that I feel even more conflicted) I want to take too many other classes. I've narrowed down the debate to Econ c3 (evironmental econ) vs. ED 100 ("The City"). Econ is useful but freshman-level and I don'tr eally get it. I know that I should be able to understand demand curves but they seem backwards. I can tell you the world's largest producer of rice, the second most traded commodity on Wall Street, or the implications of using food for fuel, but I can't immediately figure out economic models. Stupid, I know. ED 100 is not going to help me as much on my grad school apps, but I feel like I should take that class to become a more informed person. I learned more about modern Baghdad (we covered ancient Baghdad in 170A) in 20 minutes than I have in the past eight years.  On this whole political economy stuff I think I flew before I learned how to walk with it...which is why Econ seems relatively difficult for me. Yay for no fundamentals!!