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...