It's in human nature to find comfort and to look positively at your current state of professional development. A healthy dose of confidence will get you far in life.
That said, for every year gained, one is ultimately lost. It's a zero-sum game. You don't try to 'learn til death'. You try to keep up. If kicking and screaming are needed to keep up, then so be it.
Experience is ultimately overrated. If you don't continue to make mistakes throughout your career and learn from them, you are doing it wrong. If you feel like you didn't make many mistakes along the way, you probably didn't get that far anyways.
Practical answer: AA will give you all kinds of continued education when you get there.
if i don't continue to learn throughout my whole life in architecture, i'll probably get bored and become a mail carrier. it's one thing that makes the stress ok: the constant potential for a next thing to learn.
that said, i didn't NOT know things 20yrs ago, just different things. i read my sketchbooks from 1990 and they're fascinating and i'm amazed at the luxurious amount of time that i had to think about things. not only have i learned different things, i think differently now.
likewise, in 2000 i was in a different place, different concerns and interests.
just last week i was asked to revisit a project that i did in 2000. we did some things that - to our knowledge, anyway - hadn't been done. we had to learn a lot at the time about how to accomplish these things.
now, 10yrs later, we know a little bit more about what did and didn't work and we're going to be involved in the remedial work to fix issues that have arisen from the original design. again, we'll learn and make mistakes that will teach us even more.
Steven - took an idea from your post and dug up old sketchbooks/notes and leafing through that stuff is really interesting - I feel that now getting back to some of these old interests and issues drawn and jotted down in the past could (hopefully) shake up a few ways of thinking and doing that have gotten a bit calcified.
The idea of learning from oneself is a fascinating one in general - I wonder if anyone has studied this - nothing really springs to my mind at the moment.
it is pretty great to realize that you used to be so smart. : )
i'm reading a book right now, in fact, in which it describes norman mailer's early writing career. he kept journals of his thoughts early on and credited those early journals with providing fodder for over a decade of his best work.
do any of you keep ideas of potential projects, with the hopes of coming back to them? i have been creating [schematics] / [ideas] for years, and now that i apparently have more free time, i look forward to tackling them.
Yes, definitively - when for example a competition proposal doesn't really come together, but the initial ideas feel good, I try to hopefully come back to them later - the old notebooks are maybe the best way - they document many of the things that felt like dead ends at the time - so in addition to being able to get back to the ideas you thought were good at the time, you stumble upon stuff you didn't really value then, but that is revealed to be of some worth on this second look.
thanks Helsinki, i was thinking the same thing; never let a good idea - hell even a bad one - slip by, document, even if just a couple of words, fleeting thoughts, every single thing...
the interesting thing is that as you get older the things that were difficult to grasp become easier, and the things that were almost default you brain finds trouble absorbing.
Sep 10, 10 10:46 pm ·
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architecture = learn til death
I am just slightly drunk and slightly curious to know how all of you have really continued to learn even into your older years.
It's funny how much you think you know when you're younger.
It's in human nature to find comfort and to look positively at your current state of professional development. A healthy dose of confidence will get you far in life.
That said, for every year gained, one is ultimately lost. It's a zero-sum game. You don't try to 'learn til death'. You try to keep up. If kicking and screaming are needed to keep up, then so be it.
Experience is ultimately overrated. If you don't continue to make mistakes throughout your career and learn from them, you are doing it wrong. If you feel like you didn't make many mistakes along the way, you probably didn't get that far anyways.
Practical answer: AA will give you all kinds of continued education when you get there.
curiosity
taking some risks
having a few things of enough interest that it keeping up is inevitable
reading a lot, always --- not just fiction, autobiography, history --- undergrad or grad level books on concepts, method, theory
writing often, whether serious or silly, long or short
travel & going to exhibits, performances, etc, that are meaningful to me
design competitions or other miscellaneous design that stretches skills
if i don't continue to learn throughout my whole life in architecture, i'll probably get bored and become a mail carrier. it's one thing that makes the stress ok: the constant potential for a next thing to learn.
that said, i didn't NOT know things 20yrs ago, just different things. i read my sketchbooks from 1990 and they're fascinating and i'm amazed at the luxurious amount of time that i had to think about things. not only have i learned different things, i think differently now.
likewise, in 2000 i was in a different place, different concerns and interests.
just last week i was asked to revisit a project that i did in 2000. we did some things that - to our knowledge, anyway - hadn't been done. we had to learn a lot at the time about how to accomplish these things.
now, 10yrs later, we know a little bit more about what did and didn't work and we're going to be involved in the remedial work to fix issues that have arisen from the original design. again, we'll learn and make mistakes that will teach us even more.
Just watching the world go by will teach a lot + all the great stuff already mentioned.
Nice site Helsinki...
Thanks - part of lifelong learning - getting acquainted with notepad and html...
Steven - took an idea from your post and dug up old sketchbooks/notes and leafing through that stuff is really interesting - I feel that now getting back to some of these old interests and issues drawn and jotted down in the past could (hopefully) shake up a few ways of thinking and doing that have gotten a bit calcified.
The idea of learning from oneself is a fascinating one in general - I wonder if anyone has studied this - nothing really springs to my mind at the moment.
it is pretty great to realize that you used to be so smart. : )
i'm reading a book right now, in fact, in which it describes norman mailer's early writing career. he kept journals of his thoughts early on and credited those early journals with providing fodder for over a decade of his best work.
do any of you keep ideas of potential projects, with the hopes of coming back to them? i have been creating [schematics] / [ideas] for years, and now that i apparently have more free time, i look forward to tackling them.
Yes, definitively - when for example a competition proposal doesn't really come together, but the initial ideas feel good, I try to hopefully come back to them later - the old notebooks are maybe the best way - they document many of the things that felt like dead ends at the time - so in addition to being able to get back to the ideas you thought were good at the time, you stumble upon stuff you didn't really value then, but that is revealed to be of some worth on this second look.
thanks Helsinki, i was thinking the same thing; never let a good idea - hell even a bad one - slip by, document, even if just a couple of words, fleeting thoughts, every single thing...
life=learn til death
or
...the hollow horn
Plays wasted words, proves to warn
That he not busy being born is busy dying...
why would one ever want to stop learning? am i missing something? oh, yre drunk. in that case, all you need to know is that Ibiza is off 'da' hook.
the interesting thing is that as you get older the things that were difficult to grasp become easier, and the things that were almost default you brain finds trouble absorbing.
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