W T F

This post was originally in Chinese. But I gave up when I was half way done. I always thought I could compose some beautiful words in my native language. I guess I was wrong. I can no longer handle my mother language to match with my more matured thinking anymore. So sad…

I’m so tired of my life. I’m done with more than half of this school year, and when I look back, all I see is dealing with endless problems from school and living. These problems never helped me to learn anything, except wasting my time. I kept hoping and dreaming about things I want. But I always end up with disappointment and heart breaking. I remember when last summer started, I counted the days and wait for the time to go home. I thought I missed my family and that’s where I belong. I finally made it home, but what’s waiting for me was such a big mess. I was angry, embarrassed and hoping that my family could break apart so that each of us would have a separate but peaceful life. Then I started to count the days again, for going back to school this time. I thought everything would be better once I go back. After making through airplanes, trains and buses, I was “home”, another home, an empty apartment that I had just moved into. With helps from some of my friends, I moved all my stuffs into the new apartment. I was so exhausted. After all that lifting, cleaning, unpacking, whatsoever, I still couldn’t sleep for 2 nights because of jetlag. I asked myself that if this is what I wanted. I was so lost. I don’t know where I can go to find some help. I tried my best, but why can’t I just have a moment to enjoy something, anything from my life.

School started soon after I came back to Eugene. The first day was exciting, because my someone was coming back from a short trip to Japan. He looked tired, but at least happy about his trip. I was jealoused. I could never be like him, going for the thing he wants no matter what it takes. I think my personality makes me not enjoying my life as I should be. I always worry about the outcome of my decision, and I always want to be the best. And I know that is impossible because I’m not a genius. Anyways, starting the second year in the architecture program, I realized I have to be very good at handling some stupid professors and their stupid classes. It was a tough job for me since I don’t like to tolerant with people who has low abilities for handling things. However, I’m a student and if I want to get that piece of paper that shows my knowledge, I need to follow the rules. I’ve done so much meaningless works. Sometimes, the words from teachers or students just make me want to twist their heads off and wash them in the toilet. I could have learned so much more in a better school. But, my SAT score was not high enough to put me into those schools, nor do I have that much money to pay the tuition (when I took the SAT test, I’ve only used English in my daily life for a year, what do you expect?). No one to blame except myself.

Fortunately, I was able to have a nice trip to Canada during winter break. Me and my someone headed north to Seattle-Vancouver-Victoria and back. My trip almost stopped at Vancouver. But under my strong determination, we got on the ferry going to Victoria. I thought I wasn’t there just for hanging out with my someone’s friend. I mean, it was fun, but that was not the reason why I was there. If I can’t even make my trip to be my own one, I’m such a big loser. I remember my someone said after the trip that since he got the full refund of his air ticket, he was fine with the “extra” part of our trip. I was thinking, oh, the refund… did I get any ‘thank you’ from him? I didn’t remember, but I would think he had.

So, here I am, struggling with the eighth week of winter term. Three out of the four classes that I’m taking are ridiculous. The course itself would be interesting if we have some professors that know what they’re teaching. I got my recent midterm from Renaissance Architecture History. My lovely British professor gave me a D-. He also offered me to visit his office because he thought I didn’t understand his lecture and I didn’t put enough effort in his class. Well, if 8 hours of study group and countless times for memorizing those names and years doesn’t count for effort, I really don’t know what else I should do to pass this class.

I don’t know what I should look forward to. I guess I should just go through each day without too much thinking until I get out of this cage. Don’t expect too much so that I won’t be too disappointed. That’s right.

Random 2

I have about an hour before the next class. After checking emails and serving websites (all that routine you do when you get online), I still have 45 mins to spend. Actually I've only spent about 5 mins to check all my email accounts. No one sent me email except the department office's secretary. She's never tired of sending us emails about all the lectures and activities in School of ARCH. So I decided to write another random post, just to waste the time. "Woo...she's got time to waste. She must be so free and relaxed" you might think. Heck NO! This may be the only 45 minutes free time I have for today, besides eating and sleeping. I've got tons of projects and readings to do, but I just don't want to do it NOW! I wonder, if I keep doing homework one after another like a robot, how long I can make it. I think I would definitely go crazy before the sun goes down.

Sometimes I think architects are like fortunetellers. Fortunetellers never really know what's in your future. They make up something and make you believe it. The work of architects is a process of researching the past/present, predicting the future and then creating a habitat that they think is good for human beings. The architects have to be good predictors and planners. When they design buildings, they need to think about what it's going to be like in the future 50-100 years. They create and change human life patterns. Don't believe me? Well, think about how many times you had to adjust your living habit in order to fit into a new physical environment. You finally got use to the new habit, which means the architecture changed you. And most of the time you're not bounded to one environment. If you don't like the crappy work of one architect, you look for another one, or at least do something to improve the situation. For example, you just started sharing an apartment with another person after staying alone for a long time, you felt so weird because your freedom and privacy is taken away. Now you can't throw your clothes everywhere on the floor or do whatever you like in the house anymore. All your space is restricted into that little tiny room you get. But then, you figured out maybe everything is really not that bad. Just close the door or maybe even put a sign on it when you feel you're exposed too much to the public. You also start to adjust your schedule and try to have more freedom and relaxing time while the other person is in absence. In a small scale, you got your freedom/privacy back. And you need to tell yourself that this situation is contemporary. Once you finish your school and move to another place (I'm referring to college student), you're out in that wild world, doing whatever you want again. At that time, you'll have bunch of other new environment you need to fit into. But at last you know that you're going back to that old crappy place anymore.

In the process of being trained to be a professional architect, sometimes I found the working habit is a little bit too overwhelming for me. By that I mean I always want to figure out what's going to happen beforehand and make a plan for the future. But life has too many variables and uncertainties. It's really hard for me to just keep going without knowing the directions. I think most of the source of my depression or disappointment comes from that fact that the real life doesn't fall onto my plan and there's no way for me to be that flexible, unless I don't care about myself and my life. Maybe my personality is telling me that there's no other job as suitable for me as being an architect. We live in dreams.

All right. This post is turning to look like an essay. It's time to go to class now. Another busy days (after school) is knocking on my door. I heard it's coming...