Below is draft of a previous post from October 22nd, 2014, 4:36am… I was feeling very misunderstood, and there are definitely a lot of things said below that I would disagree with now and probably even right after I wrote it (hence why it remained unpublished), but for now let’s just treat it as a critic of architecture school culture and artifact of one of the highest and lowest moments in my architecture school career when I felt the most heated and frustrated, as well as the closest to wasting away into the blighted earth…

The good news is, I survived the summer. The better news is that Venice was incredible, and the best news so far is that the women’s cross country team made Regionals last week!

Unfortunately, there’s still the bad news—Fall semester has me running (literally) all over the place. Linear algebra, cross country, studio, construction technology, digital fabrication, and a writing class have been tugging at my sleeves, stretching them out beyond their limits. A first stab at master planning ended in an abysmal midterm review and the all-too-familiar midterm crisis. Oh the injustice of it all!

Why am I here? Do I really want to be an architect? What is architecture, really? If being an architect means being an unprofessional, arrogant cynic, then I’m out. If it means I have to destroy my brain, blame myself for faults beyond human control, and fry my enthusiasm in a puddle of grease from their shoes, then I’m taking a hike.

Depressing thoughts reel in when reviews don’t go well. There’s always more to do, there’s always something wrong, and I can’t help but feel that the critics enjoy dishing their half-boiled philosophies upon us. They can insult us, judge our work with no filter, and play the know-it-all, and all we can do is stare dumbly at the inevitable disapproval.

School is bullshit. Life is just a great big steaming pile of turd, and we’re all just a bunch of pooper-scoopers with varying capacities for shit. Some have talent for spreading it all around.

If this is making you sad, don’t worry. You’re not the only one…