"It's a sad day when all you ever wanted to become was an Architect and you realize its a dead end road"

Look at it this way. It could be worse.

I realized after I had invested the best 12 years of my life, hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition and opportunity costs, etc.

I did get licensed, but in retrospect I would have been much better of had I come to the conclusion you have come to at the point in my life in which you are in yours.

Congrats. Seriously. Sounds like you are going to avoid what would have likely turned out to be a tarpit of a career. I didn't. I'm desperately attempting to extracate myself now.

Yet, you continue to spend all of your time here, polluting all the threads with your negative attitude.

The truth is ugly and painful sometimes. Get over it. Don\'t Blame me for reality. I do not make the rules. I\'m just another face in the crowd. Take it up with the Big Guy Upstairs.

IHATEMARXISTS,

I wish I could take you out for a beer. Or introduce you to a girlfriend or wife. Because you need a break from all that negative thinking, man! why are you posting negative comments in every thread possible? why is there so much hate inside you? i hope you find a reason to smile tonight

*bracing for your negative response which doesn't blame yourself at all but only outside factors*

but anyways, whatever you want to do with the rest of your life, I hope you will achieve it.

you really shouldnt make such a big decision based solely on what people write on one internet forum. I hope there was more to your decision than that

People tend to come here specifically to complain about things, so it tends to seem a lot worse than it actually is


It actually is possible to have a career in architecture and be happy

You can work as an industrial designer with a degree in architecture. You can't really work as an architect with a degree in industrial design.

Something to think about. This is coming from an unemployed industrial designer who's going back to school for architecture. Irony?

Good luck.

Switch...that is something to think about! does ID go into the design process like architecture? that is the best part and I really enjoy the technical side as well details are fun...Im just scared that I will never get a job and waste to much money and time in school/internships etc... but I do see that NCARB changed when you can start IDP so that may helpas well...I am torn I would like to become an architectish type I dont care if I ever get the lic.. just want to understand the stuff more and do more then draw reflected ceiling plans for 10 years, it is a hard to choose and apps are due for schools soon! I have only worked in one arch firm for 4 months and worked construction for a few years and enjoy it so I enjoy it so far but dont have much real world exp to judge from.

CheesesChrist said, "I wish I could take you out for a beer. Or introduce you to a girlfriend or wife. Because you need a break from all that negative thinking, man!"

Actually just got back from an evening break during which I went to my gorgeous custom cozy house which is situated in beautiful country neighborhood with excellent neighbors and friends, had a hot meal pre-prepared by my intelligent and caring and lovely wife, I spent an hour and a half with both my kids playing and reading books after dinner with them while my wife gave me an awesome back massage. Then I got back in my very luxurious road chariot and drove in supple comfort back to where I am now.

My life is excellent. Overall, I have way more to be grateful for than complain about. In fact, if it weren't for my naivette when I was a decade younger mixed with architecture staining my professional aspirations I probably wouldn't have anything to complain about. Seriously, I have great friends, excellent family both immediate and extended. So pretty much anything and everything in my life that has ever been negative has been architecture.

I also don't escape by self-medication, e.g. drinking or drugs to escape any demons I've let setup shop in my life. Without a single exception I can say absolutely that I have never seen anything of long term benefit come of alcohol or drugs. So I don't drink or do drugs, recreationally or anything. Nothing. Plus I've probably saved a lot of $$$ so far in my life by not spending anythign on booze. Perhaps that is one of the reasons I seem to not be in as dire straights financially as so many seem to be right now. Not sure, but I am grateful to my Maker for getting me through these hard financial times. I know some aren't making it. In most cases it is their fault but in some it isn't there fault at all.

My one big wish is that as many of you would wake up to your pathetic folly (ultimately whether the profession survives or not is not here nor there), begin to pull your hipster heads out of your hipster arses and start to think outside the boxes the majority of you have constructed within the walls of your own skulls.

Since I know no man is an island I know that it would benefit me if you all were to come to your senses one of these days.

Its really sad what most of you have done to yourselves (boxed into social and economic corners). But it is never too late if you'd just find the courage and balls to search for everlasting meaning to your lives and mostly empty existences.

However, I personally have experienced too much dissappointment from the apathetic boomer/ hipster crowd to hold my breath for a bonafide positive change in trajectory in the contemporary USSA.

nobody cares.

wait... you are a guy?

IHATEMARXISTS,
(1) Don't blame the profession for your personal failures and, (2) if you have such an excellent life, what the fuck are you doing on these forums 24/7? (3) Everyone, of every political and economic belief system, most likely hates you.

gotta love architecture... every firm has "that guy/girl" to make it their mission to run up to the newly hired intern or anyone even interested in architecture, and vent their frustrations about how architecture has ruined their lives.

Its okay, i do it too... but then i get a full night sleep and a cookie and feel all better :)

Well after reading my own post I can clearly tell I want to do Architecture ...So I am going to do it and apply anyway and not let people who are pissed ruin what I want to do maybe It will work or maybe I will live in a house built from stolen pallets that I took from my job at the lumber yard but time will only tell...I am just going to stay positive and have a good laugh about it even if it is bad never know untill you try so screw it hopefully see some of you at grad school/work someday!

hi winston
you sound better these days
good for you
glad to hear it

hopefully you're current well-being will help tamp your white-supremecist urges.
ok
gotta go out and get my miscegenate on.
word to your mother.

Be really careful of lumping things into one pile. There are many, like myself, that try to offer some real world experience on why we left the profession (or those that did not).

If it makes you feel better to lump everyone together, then go for it, but just remember most of us are posting in an effort to share true experiences, not bitch (I left early on, no regrets about education, etc., actually quite happy with the business world, sans this economy).



Personally, I would have loved to have access to the various posts on here back when I was thinking about school. Most likely, the only change I'd have made was to get an MBA/MRE at the same time (which I could have done with very little effort, I just didn't know how useful they'd be later on).

So take what you want, leave what you want, but keep in mind most people on here are actually interested in sharing/learning/growing. After all, some of us (like myself) have been here since Archinect was created.

Some say architecture is only for the super ambitious and dedicated souls... I say not so fast as I'm actually far too ambitious to have stayed in...

I gotta say - I don't understand why those who failed to make it in the profession insist on hanging around here, poisoning the well for those who still have an interest in the profession.

i gotta say - it's cathartic. and SOME of us wish we had had that advice ourselves. i believe the previous post covered it pretty well.

and for the record, i did not fail. i was NEVER unemployed. not once through 6 downturns. but i saw MANY friends ravaged by them. i also went to two top 5 schools. worked at some top firms. but the negative parts just added up for me. i have gotten TONS of emails through the site asking for further advice, data, help, suggestions, etc. though. so i think YOUR opinion does not matter to me. some people obviously do want the help, so it is not up to you whether they get it. sorry. just skip our posts.

for the record, i am not trying to be destructive. i am trying to offer information based on experience and REAL numbers. what other kind of advice is there really? just because it does not happen to mesh with YOUR experience does not mean it is not helpful. perhaps it is YOU overly-optimistic posters "poisoning the well?"

billy goats gruff said,

"Some say architecture is only for the super ambitious and dedicated souls... I say not so fast as I'm actually far too ambitious to have stayed in... "

Amen.

digger said,

"I gotta say - I don't understand why those who failed to make it in the profession insist on hanging around here, poisoning the well for those who still have an interest in the profession."

THE WELL ITSELF IS POISONED, idiot.

You say its not, I KNOW IT IS (MArch, 12 years practical experience, licensed) and therefore have an obligation to sound the alarm because I do give a damn about my conscience and the fate of my soul in this life and the next.

And I am not interested in playing this corrupt contemproary "Made in the American (crumbling) Empire" BS where I subcontract the truth out to everyone else and claim the spoils as worthy my own merit (a technical way of anti-euphamisizing the contemporary phenomenon of the expert liars feeding the masses of idiots poison by labaling it "healthy" when in FACT it has veritable, evidence based POISONOUS consequences).

Wake UP ZOMBIES! Yes You Can (think for yourselves)!

One more thing for numbskulls who think like digger, Do "people" like you (really zombies inside who look like humans on the outside) really, seriously, honestly, reasonabley, with all the remnants of common sense you can possible muster think that:

by wishing the well wasn't polluted and wishing away those who might think it is polluted will in any degree actually address any degree of what pollution might actually be in there?

The road to hell is (with otherwise intelligent people anyways) paved with good intentions seems an appropriate, albeit trite, saying to insert here.

move to spain.

I don't know how you'll switch to UI design with an industrial design degree or an MFA. The design of interfaces involve much more than "art".They are completely different.MFA? Seriously it is useless.Fuck art.There is a person in "Working out of the Box" section who switched from architecture to UX Design.

ParadOxx86 said,

"Fuck art."

This may be the first rational thought I have heard expressed on this forum. Careful, you might start getting the idea that common sense is good and that therefore all this modern abstract crap smells as bad as it looks. A turd is still a turd. Especially is some contemorary architect is trying to convince me otherwise and get me to eat it.

You can't spell smart without art.

hey, no need for an mfa! unless it's an ma in a country where higher education is well funded (scandinavia)

and I beg to differ, but an arch background is great for UI design. Some of the best and most innovative UI people I know were "artists formerly known as 'architects'."

but this is not to pooh pooh people who decide to take on m.arch.

i'm just against the terrible miseducation and misleading aspects of architecture as a profession, that glorifies the success of a small percentage that tends to come from an already upper class or a solid socio economic background/ circumstances.

but then again, this is a larger issue with the american public

(see: nytimes op ed: is graduate education worth it? )

i belive the correct phrasing to be:

fuck art, lets dance!

but i could be wrong.