Alone but not lonely

I image that in architecture school I will be pretty isolated from my peers. I felt like I was older in my doctoral program even though I wasn’t that much older than most of my fellow classmates; in architecture school, I’m going to be significantly older than most of my classmates, with pros and cons already surfacing in my head. For one thing, I have a lot of life experiences under my belt. However, I’m sure I probably won’t get super close to all my classmates to really benefit from my expertise. I felt kind of lonely in graduate school in Davis, and that loneliness was only cured when I moved to Los Angeles and joined the LATA, which really gave me a wide network of friends. 

Yet, loneliness is not always a bad thing, especially for an artist. There is this saying that the artist needs some solitude to hone his or her craft, that a degree of loneliness is essential to master the craft. I kind of believe in that. With group mentality, it’s just too easy to fuck around and have too much fun. It’s hard to get work done at the end of the day. I imagine that a fair portion of individuals who go into the arts are not super ambitious or driven. I’ve already touched upon this topic in a previous post but won’t go into it anymore. This is certainly not everyone, but I feel the majority are just sort of your run-of-the-mill artsy student with family who have the means to support an education in the arts. I’m sort of on that boat too, so I’m not really judging anyone here. However, I think it’s fair to say that I’m more on the ambitious side of things. I want to excel in the long run.