..its an eyeful...

my earache intensifies. and since i won't be able to sleep well given the pain and my need for drugs...yet i NEED sleep to get better, i figure i will kill a little time with the connundrum that wrecks my soul lately...not that i shouldn't be finishing my portion of the site model that i should have finished yesterday =(.

this quarter is painful. yet, i'm getting so close to being done with this program (technically 2 more quarters one of which will be a kick ass furniture studio this summer the other quarter + is all about thesis baby)...that it in some corner of my mind its liberating.

first of all, my prof. is great...most notably in my mind b/c he was a community organizer on the west side of chicago (my hometown) many moons ago! a person after my own heart...social conscience AND design conscience. however, enter angst: on the most mundane level...there is nothing mini about the mini-muni+market we are designing. i know that the goal with this quarter is that we focus on integrating all the building systems...and that in way calls for a fairly sizeable building...but i am so uninspired and freaking tired of designing for gargantuan intitutional programs that i literally cannot stand going to studio...looking at studio...thinking about studio. perhaps there are ruts in any quarter...and i think i might be in one. currently i am much more into my design activism seminar and my architecture and the landscape course (coincidentally both taught by one of my current bad ass idols--somehow everything that i want to be-- jeff hou ). i ran across this post in the discussion boards...and i have to say, that UW is definitely more pragmatically oriented. last quarter was the most theoretical and conceptual studio i have had to date, and it was a tectonic studio so there was some pretty serious practical issues that needed to be resolved in the end. i think too much pragmatics without that balance of theory is a problem...for me anyway. we are only required to take one theory class in the three years that we are here. people take more i'm sure, but just the requirements pretty much indicate where the emphasis lies. as a flipside and plus about the program here, is that i have met some really compassionate, knowledgeable and special people here professors, staff, and students...no tyrants and maniacs. that has been a large contributor to my ability to somehow or another make it thus far in this program...from a educational/institutional/pedagogical stance, i have to praise them for that.

we had our thesis meeting a week or so ago, and somehow the conversation touched on keeping in mind that future employers are going to look at your thesis choice/work and it could effect your employment efforts. i suppose i understood that, but it was really frustrating to hear that. especially being less interested in architecture as a commodity but more interested in the human condition as it relates to space and place...(yet not so far on that end that i think i want to be an environmental psychologist which is what i initally thought...next stop ph.d environmental psychology in the footsteps of one of my other idols dr. sharon e. sutton) but maybe...anyway so if i explore architecture as an act of resistance and subversion in thesis...now i should be afraid about that being too off the wall or radical to get hired??? geez...i've been looking forward to thesis...its all i can think about these days...and i thought school was for me to explore my ideas about architecture...not all about the profession...architecture is so much more than that. but, thinking ahead to employment, cuz, baby still gotta eat. i don't want to be a cog in a machine, i want to be valued as a thinker first and a doer second. thinking isn't billable though i guess. so, does that mean i should pursue an academic career? how the hell will more school work with the family thing. as for practicing professionally if i go that route, i'm not interested in working for rich people, i defintitely want to do unconventional work that inspires and relates to REAL people and real life social issues...going into architecture school i initially thought i wanted to work only on public buildings which now seem to be too racked with beauracracy for me to really find any enjoyment in that...where does that leave me? maybe i'm thinking too hard but i really feel like i'm trying to mix oil and water. i'm not going to give up...but sometimes it feels like i should! i mean, all at the same time, can't wait to get out of school and don't want to ever have to deal with the insanity of the conventional work world. i both love architecture with a little a and hate it with a big A. despite 2 years of immersion in the whole northwest regionalist modern aesthetic i'm not quite convinced...yet i've not found my own aesthetic either. i hate that i can't be eveything do everything i want to be and do at the same time. i both love being a mom, and hate that in many ways, i have to apologize for it and eventually i'm going to have to come to terms with it being seen as a handicap...whether sometimes its true or not. i like changing people's perceptions of who and what women...brown ones at that...are and can do/be....at the same time, I hate that 99.9% of the time, i'm "the only one" in any of my classes...and that the profession is no better. there's so much to look forward to and yet so little.