but what if

i got two job interviews for my fall internship semester this week. one is in seattle (!) and one is back in chicago. this period of time inspires a great deal of anxiety for me, which is certainly due to the amount of uncertainty. 

where will i work? what city? what firm?

how will i measure up to other people that are applying?

what sets me apart from them?

where will i live when/if i get a job somewhere?

who will take over my lease in cincinnati?

so many variables.

the firm in seattle has a particular emphasis on educational architecture. a friend of mine actually worked there last spring, and encouraged me to apply there. he told me, when i told him that they contacted me about an interview, that i should have a stance on education and leverage my background as a teacher-turned-architect.

this got me thinking. what is my position? what would have made my situation better? it seems like there are so many factors that played into the environment, and that the building itself played a somewhat minor role in my students' lives. but it was their refuge from the city blocks that they had to traverse each day. it was their space, no matter what it was.

firstly, the school i taught in was originally built as an elementary school in the 1960s. it was a simply organized building - each of the three floors was one long hallway running north-south with classrooms on either side - maximum 15' wide, including a row of bright red full height lockers on either side. the gym was about half the size of a normal gym, and the auditorium and cafeteria were tucked away in various corners. during the few months of the year of sweltering urban heat (August, September, and maybe a bit of June at the end of the year), the building was cooled by portable air conditioners (on wheels the first year/in the window the second), but these air conditioners ran so much that you almost couldn't blame them when they stopped blasting arctic air three times a week.  stairwells were glazed with glass block windows from the first floor all the way to the third.  as the sun moved across the sky, the classrooms on the east side of the building would gradually warm up, though the west side of the building would be pelted with warm rays during the heat of the afternoons. we shared the building with an elementary school, so our students were limited to the first floor entry/administrative offices, about 1/3 of the second floor, and the entire third floor.

-what if the hallways had been appropriately scaled for high school boys?

-what if the light hadn't been beaming through classroom windows, gradually warming students that were wearing blazers, dress shirts, and khakis?

-what if classrooms were big enough to accommodate overcrowding? 

-what if there were enough chairs such that students didn't have to sit at my desk, or at the table by the overhead projector?

-what if the school wasn't tucked away on a side street surrounded by abandoned lots and housing projects?

i could probably list about 30 things here. but what if?

woof

i'm not really sure why, but it seems like i am increasingly surrounded by BS.

why is it that people feel the need to state and restate and restate again? 

i'm not sure if it's due to our human egos, but that might be a contributing factor. i'm certainly not claiming innocence in this phenomenon.

"Talk less. Smile more. Don't let them know what you're against and what you're for." - 

I don't necessarily agree with the last part, but it seems like we are all caught up in this rat race of proving who is the smartest.

Some people say that I'm kind of a quiet person - I've come to the conclusion that if I'm quiet around you, that's not a good sign for our relationship. It means I don't feel comfortable voicing my opinion. People can be exhausting.

4/17/16

No new friends

In the past 24 hours, I have experienced the following:

1) a white boy using the n-word

     a) "because I listen to hip hop"

     

2) someone beginning a sentence with: "well the one thing that I agree with trump on.." 

     a) followed by "is that everyone is too worried about being politically correct"

I am too old to be dealing with this s***. 

Lexington

saturday snapshot

4 April 2015

It wasn't just any old Saturday at Keeneland as I drove up to the Louisville lot that morning.

It was a beautiful Kentucky Keeneland Saturday. Crisp, bright, nearly cloudless.  The rains of the previous week had caused just enough misery to reward us with those ever-familiar rolling hills of budding bluegrass.

I came bearing three of my mom's most-prized camping chairs that sit in the back of her Acura SUV on the other 51 weekends of the year, searching for familiar faces as I wove through the endless rows of open truckbeds, coolers, and red-and-white-checked tablecloths.  From a couple rows over I spot a familiar back-of-a-head; Annie's setting up a pair of cornhole boards.

The driver's side door to the SUV closes as I'm greeting her, and I'm introduced to Robert. He's currently the official photographer for Centre, and we exchange brief life synopses as the three of us unpack the sacred camping chairs.  Normally, I would turn down any form of IPA, much less a double IPA, but I acquiesce to Anne's offering...  its abhorrently unpalatable taste will slow my drinking pace, and free beer will indeed always be free beer.

Anne's brother Joe arrives on the scene a few minutes later, just as the conversations have lulled into us reaching for the tray of Chick-fil-A nuggets, which are perhaps better cold.  Jennifer and Sara arrive to even the ratio of males to females, and we all begin the process of sunburning our foreheads as bluetooth speakers pair with our devices to start the party.

I take a look around - this is an excellent group of people.  Everyone is happy to be out at the races, and the weather lends an electric vibe to the day.  Bud Light Lime provides a reprieve for me after a Solo-full of double IPA swill (Trust me West Sixth, it's not you, it's me), and we settle in for a friendly game of cornhole (or BAGS, as midwesterners insist... brief aside, I always envision BAGS being in capital letters due to the accents of everyone that has ever used the term BAGS to me).  We toss repeatedly, knocking over neglected BLL's and recalibrating our only-so-often used cornhole skills. We take turns at the helm of the bluetooth jukebox, introducing the latest and greatest of our itunes and spotify accounts.

Several beers and trips to the edge of the track later, the six of us have settled into an afternoon groove.  We observe a brief moment of silence for the battery life of the bluetooth speaker, and Joe switches on the SUV's radio system. 

nice

Hi, I'm a nice guy.

While this may be a somewhat inherent character trait, it has also built upon years of skillfully shaping my niceguyness into something that is nearly always recognized by family and friends.

I always say please and thank you.

I hold doors for people.

I say ma'am and sir.

I respect my elders.

I generally defer to others' choice of restaurant.

I go out of my way to avoid confrontation.

I apologize even when apologies are unnecessary.

I'm also genuinely just a little awkward, but socially aware enough that I recognize it and make fun of myself for it. Which is incredibly charming to anyone paying attention, might I add.

What strikes me as most interesting, though, is how easily my niceguyness is (mis)interpreted as good-natured and innocent.  People LOVE nice guys. They laugh at your jokes, they like your pictures on instagram, and they flood your facebook wall with birthday posts. 

Thank you all so much for the birthday posts, texts, and calls. It means the world to me to be surrounded by such great people every day of my life. Here's to another trip around the sun! #blessed

Now, while these are all well and good, and I'm no man to say no to a couple dozen facebook likes, I've got to say: I'm sick of being treated like a nice guy.

I'm sick of the hidden meanings of words like nice and innocent, which are usually veiled ways to say naive and ingenuous - childlike.  I feel like everyone is trying to protect me; keep me in this plastic bubble to which I've grown so accustomed.  What's funny though - as much as I want to pop the bubble, I can't. Because I'm in the fucking bubble.

I'm so used to being a nice guy that I legitimately have trouble understanding not being a nice guy. How am I that much different from your average Joe? Does everyone actually suck that much? The optimist in me (cringing as I wrote this sentence so effortlessly) doesn't think so.  Perhaps I have my parents to thank for this debacle - it is with a hint of sarcasm that I say - why did you instill in me these godforsaken manners? did you know what you were doing when you were teaching me these things? Why would you condemn me to this life?

Upon further research, I actually googled the phrase "nice guys finish last" (desperate times call for desperate measures). Aside from the snarky e-cards that read, "Nice guys finish last cause yo gurl always comes first," (clearly catering to the wittier side of us nice-guys) what struck me is that nice-guy is usually accompanied by a Mr. Agreeable attitude.  The recommended strategy? Don't be a nice guy, be a great guy.  Be a man that isn't afraid to stand up to people; stick to a few key principles, and fight for them. THEN, you'll be a great guy.

But that doesn't really quite capture it either.  Being a great guy, in my mind, doesn't make the distinction from nice guy that I'm looking for.  For some reason, my mind immediately divides the categories as a deathmatch showdown: nice guys vs. assholes.  Still working on an in between.