Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May, But Don't Forget to Stop and Smell the Roses

My boss at the Planning Department at the City of Los Angeles recently asked when I graduate. "In May." I replied. "Wow, that's what, three months away?" he observed. Well, technically, four, but yeh, soon.

Besides the heart-pounding palpitations that the thought of graduation invokes, I have also been thinking what have I learned in grad school and what is still missing.

My brilliant friend E, who can pilot a helicopter, drive a race car, make a ten course French meal with one hand tied behind her back, tie speaks or can read 5+ languages, and sew wedding dresses while writing computer code or snapping beautiful photography once said that she is often tormented with all of the areas of knowledge of which she is ignorant. I laughed at her pointing out all of her accomplishments, many of which a vast majority of people will not never come close to mastering. She was unconvinced, but Socrates said that "the beginning of wisdom is the admission of one's ignorance."

As I review my resume I wish that my hair were long enough to chew on. There are so many things that I wish I knew. This, that, gah! x, y, and z! It's enough to render a person catatonic.

But if I am honest with myself, even the director of planning of the City of Los Angeles doesn't know evvvverything about planning. If he did, we would live in Utopia, not Los Angeles. We are always learning, always ever evolving, all of us.

I know more than I did when I first started grad school, some valuable lessons and others are hard-won truths. But I will know more two years from now than I do now. And even more two years from that time.

One of my favorite poems in high school was Robert Herrick's "To the Virgins Make Much of Time." This was due in no small part to Robert Sean Leonard's tortured role in the movie Dead Poets' Society, perfect for an angst-ridden teenager in the Midwest, in which this poem played a key part. Being a perfectionist I am often consumed with thoughts of what am I missing?! What don't I know!? Time nips at my heels! I must round out my wheelhouse! Instead, I need to sit back, take a breath, and now that while my drive for perfection will serve me well in my work mode, not to let perfection be the enemy of good. Focus on what I know how and know well and be sure that future employers are made aware of these attributes.

As another favorite poet, T.S. Eliot soothed in "the Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

"There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions

And for a hundred visions and revisions

Before the taking of a toast and tea. "

{stanzas 23-34}

OK, it's doubtful that Eliot would be highly sympathetic to my plight. He came off as rather stingy emotionally and more than a little pretentious. But it is gratifying to know that there is "time yet for a hundred indecisions/ And for a hundred visions and revisions/ Before the taking of a toast and tea"

And although it is unrelated to anything in this post, it is another poem about time and one of my favorites by Henry van Dyke,

"Time is too slow for those who wait,

too swift for those who fear,

too long for those who grieve,

too short for those who rejoice,

but for those who love, time is eternity."

Here is Herrick's poem in its entirety-

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles today
To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer,
But being spent, the worse, and worst,
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry.

A little slice of me & a library review

I don't like my blog to serve as a sordid tell-all kind of e-confessional. I prefer that it remains a more austere, academic type of exercise.

But while I have been composing my heart-rendering statement(s) of purpose for grad school I have been reflecting on how I came to fall in love with the concept of urban planning and I realize that my whole life has been building up to undertake this profession. Permit me, if you will, a minor, flagrant self-indulgence.

As I mentioned earlier, I was first made aware of the official, "academic" discipline while I was an undergrad in Italy and Professor Christian Sottile pointed out various architectural details that reflected different periods and significant events in a city's history. For a history dork and an amateur architecture historian that couldn't have excited me more- you can learn about the history of a city through architectural details- yowie zowie!

My interest continued when I learned that UC Irvine offered a master's degree in urban design and behavior, which piqued the interest of my internal amateur sociologist. My interests have since shifted, I now would like to pursue something with more of a sustainable architecture focus, but the metaphorical seed was definitely planted.

What I have failed to realize is that the seed was planted long and ago and perhaps the events of my life have been leading me to this. I have lived in 11 places (and counting) in 25 years and while I don't have any place that I can honestly say I would call home, except perhaps the Piazza Navona in Rome, I have always been interested in architecture.

For a while I thought that I would major in studying graceful arches, beautifully ornate windows, the romance of a porch that wraps around a stately Victorian home, etc., *swoon* In the town where I spent the majority of my childhood there was a street called Franklin that was flocked by gorgeous old homes that I often wished were mine.

I considered being an architect or a historic preservationist, as both majors were offered at my college. But I never took physics and the HP kids were all a little on the vanilla side.

But the concept of planning a town was exciting to me. My interest really started when the city of Wausau, WI, home to the aforementioned Franklin Street, constructed a new library. Now to most people this fact would not be met with much fanfare. But in the little town of Wausau it was a big deal because there wasn't a lot of major new construction that occurred.

As a little girl I had dreamed of coming to the library as a high schooler and being oh-so-cool, hanging out on the stately front steps, hanging out with my equally cool friends and maybe even my boyfriend. I think I was a cheerleader in these pre-adolescent fantasies and it stood to follow that my boyfriend was the star of the football team. Clearly, my fantasies were grounded in something out of a non-existent 1950's.

Regardless of the fact that I never became a high school cheerleader, it was quite a rude shock to me and my fantasy land of teeny-boppers and malteds when the new library was built and it possessed none of the grace or elegance of the old library. There was no grand staircase leading up to the Pantheon of Learning- just a level concrete walkway, which didn't exactly inspire visions of higher learning. Very ADA-approved, but not very Dead Poets' Society.

The new library was a giant red brick building, with a turret-like side. Not terribly graceful, but not ungainly. Certainly not "moderne," but not reeking of charm so classic that one could put quote marks around it. It's a true reflection of the feel of Wausau- basic, conservative, practical, safe, but not terribly innovative. Resigned, I continued to frequent it, but not with the giddy anticipation I used to. Who knew that something as routine as a new library would shape my career path?

(For a lovely new library, the New Berlin Public Library in New Berlin, WI, a suburb of Milwaukee is quite nice and has a freakishly good selection. I am highly critical of a library's contents, but this one passed muster with old, obscure, and new titles alike. And if you are there, go to Culver's, just down the street for burgers and custard- a little taste of heaven on earth.)

(And for a real treat for the eyes visit the Santa Monica Public Library, which is the first LEED-certified library and is an oversized, "green" version of Starbucks. Not pretentious, but definitely chic- there's an interior outdoor cafe complete with a little brook, an interior theater, and many private reading spots. Highly recommended. Dining recommendations I don't have, but there was a nice cupcake bakery a few streets over. Though I do caution you if you are to indulge in a sweet treat to eat it right away as even on a June gloom day, when I purchased my cupie-cakes, the frosting tended to move towards continental drift when stored in a black Nissan Versa. Still tasty, but not as aesthetically pleasing.)