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!!