If you want to be an architect...

If you want to be an architect… please reconsider… at least think about the followings:

Do you like sleeping?
If you do, well…then be an accountant or a librarian, architecture is not for you. I average about 5hrs of sleep a day… with a pen and a sketchbook on the night stand, in case I dreamt up (literally) a cool idea during the night (seriously).

Can you tolerate smoke filled fire escape?
When you are building models and draw on the computer around the clock, you tend to adopt a habit to smoke with your comrades, just so to break the painful monotonousness. (Personally I do not smoke, but I am a frequent second hand smoker in the fire escape, with my smoker friends)


How well do you take negative criticism?
Do you need to hear praises about your ideas all the time? Well, if you do, be a rich man or be that rich man’s wife. Architecture school is no place for you.
In architecture school, every praises and respects have to be earned. To earn that respect, you have to proof everything in your drawings, not just your mouth. Nothing personal you know, your great ideas might not be that great in the minds of others… good thing that after the critic sessions, everyone would go to O’Connell’s for a pint of beer and chill about it.

Are you pretty?
If you are, then for the sake of all mankind, be a TV anchor, a lawyer, a supermodel… hack even a nurse. In my years in architecture school, I have spotted about 30 pretty people in the architecture college. But by the end of the 5 years (yes, it’s a 5 year program), there’s only 2 pretty girls left. An Asian girl from New Mexico and a Caucasian girl from Oregon.
The Asian girl and I got pretty close but she married someone else. The Caucasian girl became my frequent project partner/best friend and we always win awards together… and yes, she married someone else as well… hmmm something is not right with these pictures.
The other 28 pretty girls looked tired and spent, after 5 years of sleeping about 5 hrs a day. Guys seem to age better in this field, I guess a few wrinkles makes you look more mature… great for architecture marketing.

Graduation rate and the bright side of it.
The architecture college I went to admitted about 140 freshmen every year. After 5 years of weeding them out through various techniques… 30 of us graduated as architects. Yes, all the other students move on to other disciplines.

Life after graduation.
Do you like a comfortable life?
Well, after you graduated as one of the 30 people that made it through the so call “boot camp”. You WILL land a job as an intern (much like doctors do. Doctors kill one person at a time when they screw up, but when one of our design failed, hundreds of people would die at the same time) and you will get a salary that’s consider lowest in any professional degrees. You will still sleep about 5 hrs a day and your work will still be criticized for your thoughts.
As for your “inferior” classmate (the other 110 “drop outs”) in architecture school, they will graduate in other fields. They became politician, entrepreneurs, lawyers, supermodels and nurses. In due time, they are the people that can afford to hire your boss’s firm to design their houses and offices. Can you live with that?

Other items not mentioned above are:

Do you like your body parts? (fingers are known to be lost in model shops)
Do you like your 20/20 eye sight? (you will be wearing glasses by the end of 5 years, I am the one exception)
And lastly,
Do you want to have a life in college? (in which we actually do. Architecture students actually really do know how to party, well, just below Frats and Liberal Arts)

Will I trade this life as an architect to be something else?
After all that… no, not a million years. There’s no better high than looking at your brainchild, singular, unique, in solid concrete and steel… knowing that it will be there even after I am gone. Yea, I am a nut… I sleep with a notebook next to me remember?