THINGS THEY NEVER TOLD YOU

You know those speakers who came to your high school for Career Day, to help you choose a career? I want to sue them all. I assume the architecture ones sign a non-disclosure agreement to ensure the industry still has people interested in it because there are things they failed to mention that would have made me rethink my choices. These are just a few…

• A normal campus life? Forget about it. We all know Grownish lied to us but even what your elder cousin or sibling told you does not apply. You’ll spend all your day in class with sessions that last four hours in the least. You’ll listen to other people talk about their free days and it will feel like a myth, like a distant dream.

• All-nighters? More like a lifestyle, especially close to pin-up. I watch my younger sibling write “pull an all-nighter” in her bucket list and I sigh with the sigh of old age. Remember when that was fun? Remember when you saw two sunrises in a row and didn’t cuss the work you were yet to finish? Man, I miss those days. After said pin-up, the answer to “what do you do for fun?’ is always, ‘I sleep. That’s what I do, sleep.”

• Thick is the skin you have to zip up every day before leaving your room, otherwise you’ll be torn to shreds. Your studio master will look at your project; the one you spent all weekend on, the one you feel proud of because you struggled a bit before getting the design to work, and they’ll draw on it with a marker pen so that they’ll never have to see it ever again. A big X that you’ll have to nod and watch as it judges you. The thing about architecture is that, like art, it is very subjective. One man’s poison is another one’s medicine. Your studio master’s poison is also your poison because if you insist it is your medicine, you’ll just have to accept a fail. Yeah, a design may be fully functional but if the one who is marking does not really like it, well… Have I been brought to tears by a crit? Unfortunately, more than once. Words are never minced. Have I reconsidered picking the course? Yes. Do I still love architecture? More times than not, which is enough.

• They did not say that every time I entered a new place I would look at the materials and judge the design. Even in the club you’ll notice that you are swaying on 30x30 vinyl tiles with 1mm thick grout. Or you’d have to step back before opening a door in an apartment and decide that the door should have been facing the other way.

• They won’t tell you that you would know random measurements in my head. You walk around knowing that doors are usually 900x2100mm and that a comfortable chair is about 450mm from the ground. You’ll be in the bus and you’ll crane your neck just to see if the building you just passed is a good case study. Then you’ll squint your eyes to see if that other building you are passing is made or brick or if the bricks are just cladding. Nor will they tell you that the person you are sitting next to will switch to a different seat as soon as one opens up because they are suspicious of the weirdo.

• That you’ll spend your days thinking of your project, what you are yet to do, what you plan to do, what you have done but need to correct… After the final pin-up, you will think about what more you could have done and you’ll be confused for the first few days because there is no project hanging over your head and you do not know what to do with that.

• That you will be called an architecture. No, it is an architect. An architect!!

• That most of your money will somehow be spent on school supplies.

• You were told you’d rest while in campus? Hell no. You work even more than you did in high school. Parties? You have a pin-up every other week, or you have to constantly improve your work and the free time you have is spent on catching up on sleep. To be fair, some people seem to be able to do it. For the good part, well there is less theory work to do, in the later years. There aren’t giant textbooks to lug around. But there are T-squares for that. And music is allowed in the studios.

It is survivable, with a great support system and a hobby. There needs a lot of self-care to survive the course. And when the ideas are finally put together in a way considered feasible, the project is really fun to do. The creation of a structure from scratch, or the redesign of an existing one, to something you are proud of is a very rewarding process.

In my second year, a lecturer told us that we needed passion or a good enough driving force to survive the course and I’d say that is true. Have some motivation that drives you to persist even in those difficult times when you are rethinking your entire career and life choices.

I am not a high school career day speaker so I am free to tell you all the facts. You’re welcome. What are some of the things you were surprised to discover about architecture after joining the course?