Mitchell wrote:
At least at my school, about 2/3 of the freshman declaring architecture as their major leave by the end of their first year. About 1/4 of what's left leave during their sophomore year. 1/2 of the ones remaining are admitted into the upper-division; the rest are sent farewell.
Yeah, and that hasn't changed in the history of architecture school ever. It's not a career for the uncommitted. That's driven by public perception of architecture as a glamorous and lucrative job, which it ain't. And even at that, the professional field is overpopulated. I've got 22+ years experience on top of a Masters Degree (7 years of college there) and I am nowhere near making 6 figures. I deferred about 25% of my pay last year in order to protect my job. It looks like I'll get that back soon, but it was not a sure thing.
Because of the overpopulation and workload of the career, schools are in fact set up to weed out the candidates heavily. Every school has at least 1 freshman prof whose job is to Put The Fear into the entry-level students. Sometimes those profs are good at it without being brutal, and some are just dicks (regardless of gender).
At my undergraduate school, the weeder was a guy named Carlos Alvarez, aka "The Cuban Spitfire". He was actually one of that first type, not a dick. A couple of years after I started, he retired, and the next guy was a leftover hippie. The architecture major population DOUBLED in about a year because the weaklings weren't getting sorted out early. My senior year, I TA'd for a new prof in the freshman class, and we pulled all manner of shiny happy person moves to get rid of the "easy A" types. We published a huge supplies list on the first day, a lot of which was not really required - that usually got rid of 10 out of class of 60. We'd assign a hefty reading list. Once we told people that 10% of their grade depended upon what they wore to the second class, and gave no criteria at all for how we would judge. Finally, after all that, we would wind up with 35 kids who really wanted to be there, and a manageable class size.
The guy at my graduate school was VERY good, but also a bit of a dick. I saw him reduce people to tears on more than one occasion (both genders). His best move (and one I stole shamelessly when I guest-criticized after graduating) was reserved for people who were obviously very in love with their own designs - he'd let you finish being all smarmy, and then he'd simply flap the backs of his hands together like flippers and bark like the Trained Seal of Approval. Devastatingly effective.
That being said, the job is highly interesting to me and seeing the real building come out looking like the pictures you drew (and having owners and users like it) is very high on the personal satisfaction scale.
My mistake was that I tried to juggle a job. This simply doesn't work. The amount of time that one needs to spend in studio is enormous.
Yeah, nobody understands that going in. Engineering, medicine, etc. all are tough studies because the material is complicated. But in architecture, you're just never done . There's always something that could be designed better, or another drawing you could do, or more rendering, or adding detail to the model, or...
All this IS her life.
