we used to drink and smoke pot for stress relief

Where I am the drinking is fairly constant after the dinner-break... calms the nerves while drafting.

mdler beat me to it

The second image is an image of Brad Pitt and Frank Gehry. I believe there are much better and accurate representations of what architecture culture really is, rather than a starchitect and an actor.

Sorry, I'm cranky today.

Apu

I also used to beat it as a form of stress relief

Where would you do that? In the bathroom? Super late at night when everyone leaves? In the parking lot?

I never even thought that some of my old classmates doing that. It just seems so dirty...

Is this topic worthy of its own thread? "Where do you beat it on school property"

rusty

you think that was Elmers in the glue bottle???

I enjoyed that, BenC. Thanks for posting.

As a professor, oldster, and mother, my biggest worry is students not knowing what level of stress is good and when it's going way too far. The opportunity for serious mental issues due to too much stress and too much of a sense of judgement can severely harm people, and while I don't think it's the school's responsibility to monitor their students' mental health, there does need to be a culture of support simultaneous with the challenge to push yourself to succeed.

The "coopetition", as it were.

I'm going to tryb to psot the image that related to this from the movie, but with FB's new photo viewing dealio I'm not sure I can.

why is this level of stress necessary?

and why doesn't anyone (other than the voice of reason above ^) question this?

nobody makes good decisions on 2 hrs of sleep. this is one aspect of architectural education that, in my opinion, just has to go.

i recently read an article about cults. overworking people and depriving them of sleep 'for the benefit of the cause' is one of the cornerstones of the brainwashing process....

(elinor, brace yourself for the chorus of "But I did my best design decision-making on 2 hours of sleep! Even less, I went 70 hours straight and came up with a brilliant scheme!!" Sure, thanks for that insight, bro. {And in this case, a bro can be female, too.})

haha...that's because you stumbled around in a fog procrastinating for the first 35 of those hours, bro...:)

'So that was our basic day-8:00 to 10:30. But that wasn’t really your basic day. Because you always, almost always worked later… And they were doing this whole new thing where they were writing all these new policies and we had to…all the staff had to stay up night and day, making these…printing the policies and putting them in books, etcetera. Because there was going to be a big event where it was going to be released to everybody. And we literally-it’s hard for me to even believe-I don’t even know how we did it. We did not sleep for weeks…about three weeks from what I remember. The only sleep we got was when we would fall asleep or be allowed to go home for two hours.'

architects on deadline? nope...a personal account i read online about life inside scientology. :)

Nice find, elinor!

you nailed that one elinor.

architecture as a cult. or cult of personality. your own personality. the difference between scientology and architecture is that in the later you are worshiping yourself. And it's stressful being a full time narcissist.

I got my degree at the school mentioned in the videos. They seem to be highly regarded in Canadia. A lot of the interview talking points reflect specific situations at that school. It used to be a 5 year barch program, but now it's a 4 year degree with an open ended masters after that. It's not uncommon for students to spend 10+semesters finishing their masters. I think the record is 18. Kind of silly...

I didn't mind putting in long hours in studio. I handled stress just fine. I do mind that I was so poorly prepared for the workforce afterwards. At least it was a co-op program (you end up with over 2 years of internships by the time you graduate). Grad students from other schools seemed even more ill suited for an actual career in this profession.

The busy work just seems so unnecessary in hindsight... Studio environment, where a student gets to 'design' a project free of any real world considerations, is grossly overrated. Yet in most schools accounts for majority of your grade.

I find two of the biggest problems are:

I) Self-doubt, and wondering if I will be called out for each of my design decisions (even though I've explained and re-explained them to myself to make perfect sense).

II) Waiting to the last minute to do work so as to gage yourself compared to other in your class. No one wants to walk down to the pin-up with a series of schematic designs and find the person next to you with finished drafts; or to come down with a well-done preliminary card model and find a finished basswood model on the table across the room.

And that's the thing. It's hard making 'design decisions' in a vacuum. In real world, those decisions are usually the result of series of objective considerations imposed by the client, the site, local laws, construction methods, etc...

'Architecture-the simulator game' can be a useful learning tool, but is far too limiting.

"No one wants to walk down to the pin-up with a series of schematic designs"

That's all (schematic design) you will ever do in a school environment. The difference is in polish of your presentation. If you just concentrate on your own work, you will not have a problem with this.

Those feelings of stress, self doubt, procrastination, sleep deprivation are never far away in real world practice. It is experience that teaches you to manage them better.

Manage expectations accordingly.

Helman as usual hits the nail on the head

STRESS IN THE studio....DUDE WAIT TILL YOU GET INTO THE REAL WORLD....THEN YOU WILL KNOW WHAT STRESS IS!

oh, by the way i'm so not stressed out, i'm broke, i have minimal work, and all i do is work on paper projects which will take months before they work there way thru goverment approval. Oh ya they also have to be on budget....and you know i would like them to be good projects, so that people will see them and want to hire me in the future.

Well, yeah, snook. I agree. Studio stress is existential stress, and part of it is necessary in learning about who you are and what you can do.

But paying the bills for a family and never sure if another job will come through the door? Ugh, *that* is stress.

Two different worlds, though.

"Those feelings of stress, self doubt, procrastination, sleep deprivation are never far away in real world practice. It is experience that teaches you to manage them better."

Exactly. I was all over the place in undergrad, crazy schedules, days without sleep. By grad school I had a system that worked for me.



I will say, in response to elinor's post, that extra effort does, most of the time, pay off. Those that went home early did not get anywhere, most were left behind, dropped out, or got kicked out.



BenC - you just have to learn how to balance things. Some of my classmates would whip out TONS of work, plastering the wall, building a billion sketch models, others would have a few polished drawings and a perfectly sanded basswood model (both, however, meeting the min requirements, that is a must).

You just have to figure out what works best for you. I've never been good at 'letting go' and just grabbing that glue gun and slapping something together, but I know that sometimes that is the right move.

That's a good point trace. I guess I keep doubting myself because I'm quite committed to not pulling all-nighters, and this has been working very well for myself. I just find it hard to go home to bed when I'm 'finished' my project while knowing there is a group of people in my class who will be working on it for the next 12 hours to the deadline. Even though I put in a lot of work into my projects (just at reasonable hours), I still feel like I'm slacking off for not conforming to the architecture-student stereotypes of pulling an all-nighter before every deadline.

Does that make me crazy?!

Are you slacking? If I didn't stay for all those all nighters in understand I certainly would have been slacking. Amazing what you can accomplish in those 12 hours, seriously, it is amazing.

However, if you are certain you are working comparable hours then relax. Personally, by grad school, I had enough confidence to know what I was doing. BUT, and a big but, I did pull all nighters when necessary (I still do, once in a while, it is just part of pushing things farther, very seldom, but I would never rule it out if it meant something better).


So, you are the one (and your professors) that can evaluate that. We can't here. My example went like this: in undergrad we all kept the same crazy schedules, you kinda have to, studios were only available after 5 on some days, etc. In grad school, I would get to the studio at about 7am, sometimes earlier, seldom later. I would stay until 7 on an average day, with a few classes in between. That's around 10+ hours a day.

If I were you, I would scrap any "rule" you have. You do what you do to get the best results you can. There are no "rules" to this process. It is not "conforming", as you say, it is simply doing the best you can with the available time.

Again, 12 hours is a massive amount of time when it comes to deadlines. You could scrap a project and remake it in that time, if you had to.



My advice: count those hours you are in the studio, look around, and see what the best students are putting in. If they are comparable, you are all set and need to relax. If they are not, then you aren't putting the effort in that others are doing.

In the end, it is your design and your product, your education. You get out what you put in.

I think a lot of the pressure for pulling constant all nighters comes from a lack of understanding of what a design studio requires. It's hard to take your first studio and really be comfortable with your design process to the point where you can budget your time effectively.

I am guessing that for most people, your first couple studios are somewhat hectic in getting your work process in order, so all nighters are more common.

Once you get a couple under your belt, you can better budget your time to be done by the deadline.

That doesnt make any of it easier, and the lure of just staying there all night is definitely a safety cushion in case you have a panic and want to redo something or start over.


My undergrad was at a small non accredited school with a small architecture program, which consisted of 4 studios and a couple side classes. I am pretty sure that most every deadline there, I pulled a couple all nighters.
By the time grad school roles around, I was much more comfortable with the whole design studio process, and was able to get my work done during reasonable hours. I think it was just the experience of doing a design project and working towards a deadline that helped.


I would really question what someone does during the day if they say that all nighters are necessary, as has been said, A LOT can get done during a solid 10-12 hours of work a day.