Mid- (student) life Crisis?

"There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full."
- Henry Kissinger

People make a fuss about going through a mid-life crisis, and I'm so tempted to say now that I've got a mid-architectural-life crisis... After all, it's my third year, of a 5 year education process, so yeah.. it's about time...

So...what exactly happened? For one, it seems that rather than me taking control of my design, clearly knowing my intentions, taking it by the horns and directing where it should go, I think my design has kinda been dragging me around, evolving in the hands of my tutor but not really in mine, while I attempt to milk it for what it's worth through a lot of post-rationalization.. And, though I'm usually good with words and ideas, I can't even post-rationalize properly, which indicates that something is indeed rather wrong....

Hm.....if I have to describe this semester, I would say it's one of prolonged mediocrity.... And what a torturing state mediocrity is! I'm neither burning with passion, nor crippled with fatigue; neither fully abandoning schoolwork to at least focus on my other passions, nor totally putting my heart into doing what needs to be done in architecture.... When I get a sense of having done at least some things, but nothing remarkable....

There were times during crit and consultation that I struggled to say what my intentions are, which is just a nicer way of saying I'm not sure I even have intentions.. And when someone else has to tell you what you want...Let's just say it can be pretty embarrassing...and no, it has never happened to me before, at least not architecturally... It makes me realise though that when you don't know what you want for yourself, other people will gladly take over and define it for you...which then makes you feel like you're just stumbling along and things happen to you, instead of you wanting things to happen and making them happen...

I should say that, hey, my design is actually kinda ok, I'm just terribly not excited about it... And well, the thing about design is..you can have an unbearably ugly design, a sore in public eyes, but if you firmly believe in it then at least it's worth something... Case in point:
Alright, alright, I shouldn't still be making jabs at post-mo architecture.. but yeah, the opposite of having full faith in ugly design is that when you don't believe in your own handiwork, no one else will.

Another thing is...ufh...dare I say it... plain laziness.... Hardwork being the highest virtue in studying architecture, to admit that you are lazy is plain blasphemy. ("What??!! The rest of them don't even have time to think about being lazy!!") Call it lack of drive, lack of motivation, lack of momentum... the end result is still the same, I'm doing things because I have to, not because I want to, and since I love my bubbly enthusiasm, this sucks big time.. Why do I still "insist", in a way, to be lazy? ...In a twisted way, laziness in archi means having 7 to 8 hours of sleep,rarely 5 or 6, and then having in total about 2 days per week to relax. Which for many people is normalcy but not here in Singapore, and especially not in architecture. Another definiton of laziness that I think is very true for me right now: just meeting the bare minimum..and well, I know this is an attitude problem, but I think these days I kind of accept the fact that I have an attitude problem..Typical conversation going on in my mind:
"But you can still finish another drawing if you want to!"
"Well yeah but I want to sleep! Anyway the tutor only asks for 2 drawings!"
"Hah! But it's crit tomorrow! Tell me which archi student sleeps 8 hours before crit!!!"
"Look I just want to be normal alright, I'd rather sleep than be so freaked out about work."
"Wrong attitude! You're an archi student you know! You're just being lazy! As it has been so far this semester!"
"I'm just trying to be normal!"
"No you're lazy!"
"Normal"
"Lazy!"
. . . . you get the gist. . . .

But if it's a problem for me, why then, am I not doing anything to address the problem? Psycho myself to believe that mine is a cool project and do what I can to represent it as so? Here is the tricky part. There are two approaches to solving problems, you either increase your efforts to crack it, or reduce your expectations. . And I'm surprised at how easy it is for me to reduce my expectations.. *ok maybe I will cry my heart out after we receive my results slip this semester, but at least this is what I feel for now.* I've always been a firm believer of challenging myself, seeing how far I can go, testing my mental limits,which, thanks to my environment here, translates into being a nerd-muggger-workaholic but somehow (hm this "somehow" part needs to be analysed later), I understand now the principle of: you want less? Then you can work less. Oh, the sweet bloody truth of Life!

Well all that's done is done, all that's said is said. I'm pretty grateful that at least my "crisis" only starts bugging me now when semester's ending soon (14 April...oh do come fast!) and not way in the beginning. And it's been a weird, unexpectedly pathetic semester, but it's a new experience for me and I'm learning how to handle it too. Shall close with this quote that I think (I hope..) is really true:

"The crisis of today is the joke of tomorrow."
-H.G Wells