Gifts and Curses

Welcome to The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, school of recognition and excellence. I have attended such school for two years already and this is my third so I thought it appropriate to talk about the considerable and significant, undoubtedly interesting change between the engineering school and the architecture school. Technicality, practicality, common sense...what do these mean to one as you read them? 1 + 1 = 2, no doubt about that. But is it possible that it might be equal to x? That through some form of mathematical formula, our basic perception of a concept is completely undermined? This is exactly how one feels as you cross 8th street between the engineering school into the architecture school. As far as I'm concerned, the only union all three schools truly share with each other is the fact that all its attendants received a full scholarship as they're accepted. My schedule consists of five classes, three of which, 1 + 1 = x, the remaining two being history and geometry, aspects of which you can't really mold and ponder about. What's there is there, St. Peter's Basilica was completed in 1626, complementary angles add up to 90 degrees, unalterable facts of life. But as you move into design class, or drawing or humanities,as cliché as this may sound, absolutely nothing is what it seemed. The simplest thigns can be interpreted into the most complex philosophical concept of life. It always amazes how drawing one line across the page defines division, which leads to the horizon, which leads into opposite forces, which leads into positive versus negative, which leads into life versus death. See how far I've gotten with just this one disturbance in the physicality of the page? It's all interesting, isn't it? It's always interesting and it takes hours to understand, to grasp, to manipulate and to regurgitate or maybe even digest it, processing an analytical defecation that can be represented visually, enabling everyone in the room to fathom the madness in your brain.

This is the Cooper Union's perception of maturity. I witnessed in the few minutes before the start of drawing lecture where three of my friends ganged on one of the three, tickling him, mercilessly torturing the poor soul, while three other members of our class looked on, shaking their heads in disbelief. Maturity is the stage at which maximum development has been reached or at which the process of erosion is going on with maximum vigor. Interesting definition, isn't it? We analyze more, we understand more, we become more close-minded, we look down on those who don't share that certain vision, that epiphanic seizure that wrote the path for us into this school, associating them with banality since they have adopted a basic perception of the way the environment revolves around us. Look at that...we're 18 going on 50.

This is my gift. This is my curse. Fact of the matter is, I'm gifted to the point that I analyze certain concepts in the interesting way, worthy to fill some air space inside of Cooper Union. But at the same time, I feel like I'm missing some part of my life that this maturity may have taken away from me, making me miss something that the lesser people are clearly enjoying. Last nigt, I watched an episode of Sex and the City where the main character, Carrie Bradshaw, ponders about aging after one of her friends started dating an ex-boyfriend of Carrie's. They had broken up because he had turned out to be completely inconsiderate, chauvinistic, a complete and utter asshole. Except that he seemed to change now, eight years later. This made her wonder if us, as humans, are getting wiser or just plain older? Does a larger number necessarily mean a larger brain? Do we truly understand the aspects of life that constantly revolve around us or do we go about abording them the same way we have before, making the same mistakes over and over again? Like dating, many guys and dolls will tell you that they have a "type" of guy or girl that they're into and the "types" they're not attracted to. But doesn't that mean you're dating the same person over and over again, but with just different physical features? Maybe that's one of the reasons why the relationships haven't been working. This is just my personal perspective on how life has been going around me but I still don't think I'm mature enough to stop myself from accomplishing that of which I render socially unacceptable.