DON'T STUDY ARCHITECTURE

1. First of all, studying architecture is bloody Intense. Architecture is a hard thing to study with a lot of work involved.

2. Group work – sometimes you get stuck with a partner who just doesn’t do anything or a group that doesn’t care. This is one of the worst things about studying architecture.

3. “Rest? What’s that?” – no time for down time in architecture school.

4. Sometimes you forget to eat. I’ve done this a few times.

5. It can be expensive – the main costs are architectural modelling materials, drawing and drafting tools, your COMPUTERS (this is a big one). There are also other things like printing costs, desks, coffee, anti-depressants (essential)…

6. Have to take brutal criticism on your architectural crits – it isn’t fun, but it needs to be done.

7. Finding a job in the architecture industry is competitive – like, really competitive. In our state, 250 Master’s students graduated and only 5 of them got immediate work after studying architecture at university.

8. Once you get into the profession of architecture, the pay sucks (at the beginning).

9. You are forced to study things you might not be interested in studying – there are so many different things you need to learn in architecture school. Design, theory, history, construction, laws, codes… the list goes on and on. You might not enjoy studying one of these subjects, but you have to do it anyways.

10. When in the profession of architecture, you might not be doing what you signed up for – not all architects design. A lot of architectural interns and graduates have the job of doing technical drawings or detailing and are rarely involved in the design aspects of projects. Architecture is at most 20% design (more realistically a lot less) and 80% problem solving, meeting building codes, laws and just doing other things.

11. Architecture isn’t as cool as Ted Mosby makes it out to be (it’s even cooler).

12. Hustle culture – the more hours your put on an architectural project, the better it is going to be. This can result in a never-ending spiral of design, adjust, refine, repeat.

13. When we say “study”, it means “produce”. There isn’t a whole lot of “studying” in architecture school as you would in medicine or biology or an electrician course. When we mention we’re “studying”, it doesn’t mean reading or sitting back watching lectures, but putting in the hard work producing drawings, creating renders, models, presentation sheets and so forth.

14. It’s a long time before you can call yourself an architect. 5-7+ years of studying and working to be precise.

15. A lot of people aren’t fit for architecture…

… And now that I’ve convinced you not to study architecture, I’m going to switch to my positivity hat and start to fight these reasons not to study architecture to hopefully change your mind.