Taking a break of a year, while taking the supplementary architecture courses, may actually help you mature and grow in your understanding of the design process so that you are much more in control of what you are exploring and learning in the future. Just food for thought.

It is difficult to rate your experience with your professor; each studio and student is different and it is very hard to second-guess a grade without literally being that professors' colleague. I will say, however, that typically there is a review process in place in which other professors must essentially sign off on any professor's decision to give his/her student a failing grade; there is also usually a protocol that the school follows when recommending removal from the studio sequence (for example: in some schools, a student must receive 2 D's or have 2 semesters of consecutive low performance in order to be forced to re-take a studio.)

I would advise you to find out what your avenues are; request a grade review on the part of the department if you feel your grade is truly not warranted; and otherwise, perhaps think about the positive sides to taking a year off. Often in design school, rather than "lose momentum" when taking time off you actually gain perspective which ultimately makes you a better designer.

I would honestly just email and ask him: if he said you were getting a C+ and you turned out to get a D+, that shows a reasonable probability of a clerical error.

If this is not the case, I would strongly advise some true introspection. I highly doubt that you were failed due to craft. Craft may have been one part of it, but if all of your designs were great and craft was your only problem, that would not be a failing grade.

thanks mantaray for the helpful tips. I spoke with the Assistant Dean of Architecture and she told me there was no such thing as a grade review, that grades were final and that the professors gave professional grading based on experience. I did not speak to her in a manner that came out offensive, but she felt that I was discrediting my professors choice to drop me. This semester review was strictly up to him to evaluate. Our end of the year review was going to be a committee, but I guess I will really have to evaluate myself during the winter break and make a final decision as what to do with myself.

rationalist this is what he wrote me:

"David,


I appreciate your maturity and enthusiasm. In the end, your craft was such that I couldn't let you go to the Spring semester.
But I am confident that you will do what it takes to improve, so that when you come back next Fall, you will be in a position
to be ahead of the other students and be a leader in the Studio.


I would use the time until then to practice your modeling skills, concentrating on the projects from this semester,especially the cube project.
If you need advice, stop by anytime after studio - I would be happy to help."

Frankly it is somewhat surprising that your school would allow you to be dropped from studio, with no grade review process, on your very first studio. Hmm.

I go to University of Houston's Gerald D. Hines School of Architecture.

my first choice was UT Austin, but I needed a higher GPA than my 3.5...either that or people had better credentials than me.

Ouch.

Perhaps the work merited a C+, but you lost a full grade for being late?

While you are weighing up your options, remember that (quoting that fine tune Sunscreen)

"the race is long, and it is only with yourself"


Figure also that if you shift years, you double your number of friends.

[/Accentuate the positive]

i have to be honest, after this project I had three drawings to complete. A shadow plan, two sections, and a axonometric drawing. I completed the shadow and section one, but I was halfway through with my axonometric drawing when i ran out of time trying to finish the cube project. It was my last week of studio before portfolio review, and I had 2 days to complete the drawings on top of finishing my cube project......I guess that could have been a factor?

Suggested class for next year:

Time Management 101


which probably means dropping

Party Hard 101


and getting an A in

getting up early and getting on it 201


on which note it's bedtime for bonzo

I was in a similar situation - I had received a D in studio not because of work but attendance. While other folks appealed their grades I said fuck it and repeated the studio. The Dean that held me back never liked folks from the construction field - just stick in their. The dean has since died and Ive gotten drunk and gone and pissed on his gravestone. Im thinking about desecrating it to. Fuck them. Get licensed, make architecture and be happy while they wallow in their academic self pity. Even if you suck - with practice you will get good.

usually schools don't start failing you till the end of 2nd year....in studio that is...

OldFogey, I am down $5k, and the list goes on.....it was such a shock to me, and I wanted to be there! Out of the 8 freshman studios, our professor was the worst at the "craft" thing. Most of the professors were more focused on composition. His famous words I can never forget. he would come over to us and if our cuts on chipboard or museum board were slighlty off or frayed, he would say "4 cuts per exacto blade". I'm not one to be upset about buying supplies, but a pack of exacto blades costs up to $35.00. U should see the cans we fill up with those things, trying to satisfy his expectations. Out of his studio this semester....4 quit because of his stringent expectations, 3 ending up leaving to pursue other degrees at the end of the semester and 3 of us got denied Spring semester.....this was outta 21 people. I didnt expect this semester to be a slaughterfest....maybe end of the year after two semesters, but not this one. I understand we're a competitive career, but man........

usually there is a redo for the project over the holidays.

talk to the dean and tell him your looking into other schools and you feel like you got shafted over a 'model'

i have seen alot of 'shit' in college and for some reason they all graduated

I can't be sure what my professor was thinking when he gave me my grade, but I did everthing up to his standards until this project. I did a color relief using chipboard, and I recieved a C+ on that because of my color arrangement (the color was either too saturated or unsaturated..) , but he said my craft was good on that....IDK, people say he really based everything on the cube project since it was a major grade, and the fact that it was a combined grade with the drawings.....maybe that ended it for me there.......I just thought it was unfair to cut me off knowing I wished to continue, I could have tried harder to prove to him I could achieve better in the Spring, but i wont get that chance.....I will have to bite the bullet and try a different professor Fall 09'

Talk to your dean and ask him or her for a frank assessment of your work and abilities. If you are really interested in pursuing architecture, this obstacle is the first of many opportunities for you to show how much you really care - grades are highly subjective and more negotiable than you might think. Unfortunately a lot of what it takes to succeed in this field is based on your ability to make your case and stand up for yourself.

You sound like a reasonable person, and while I don't know your prof's side of the story, it sounds like an unreasonable situation to me. I understand the need for care of craft - we want to be able to present things professionally. But unless you're in school to be a professional modelmaker, I'd raise a stink, too. It's first year, for crying out loud.

At my school, the entire studio grade is based on an end-of-term portfolio (not individual projects) and is actually graded by several studio profs, not your own. Their job is to sit in on portfolio reviews and answer any questions, but that's it. I think it makes for a pretty fair system where one prof doesn't have all the power to make or break your semester.

Good luck.

Dustin, our dean is retiring this year, and his attitude towards things is somewhat like our assistant deans, who thought I was being disrespectful about asking for a review of my grade. She told me it was something that was between me and my professor, and he wrote me telling me to try again...I tried being nice about the matter, but noone is willing to sit down and talk. I knew about the end of the year review with a committee, but this mid semester review was bogus...I see it like this, if u want to continue you would have stayed, if not u would have left or shown such poor projects that they would have no choice but to kick u out, but I stood firm, told him several times in person how much I wanted to pursue architecture, but idk. I can't keep trying to justify anything.......it confuses me more. Thanks everyone for your advice and concern, I really need this, especially around the "joyous" time of the year, which I will not experience to its full potential because of my frustration.

I don't think it sounds like an unreasonable situation based on the further information you've divulged in your last few posts... the craft thing is only the beginning! There was also work not completed, and the work that the student thinks the did a good job on and didn't hear any complaints about the craft on still only earned a C+. So, this is a usually C+ student who didn't complete his work, and the work he did complete was not of high craft.

to be frank i have a hard time being too sympathetic, for the reasons rationalist offers.

i will admit that when it comes to craft i have next to zero skills with model building as well. and i bin doing this for some time now. so probably i would fail on that part too. however, the truth of the matter is that clarity in the real world is very important, and craft is not a bad measure of that for first year.

it sounds like you might do better at different school where other issues are emphasized.

Craft is very important, imho. It shows attention to detail. You can take it too far, by sacrificing the larger picture, but in most cases sloppy is sloppy. I recall spending the first 2 years working on that craft.

I am amazed they didn't have a review. I doubt it'd make an ounce of difference, but the option still seems warranted (given the severity of the situation - they accepted you into the school, they should justify kicking you out).

There are too many schools that let too many 'designers' into the professional world (including all design) without talent or skill too easily, imho. It'll do you some good to work on the issues. Take your prof up on his offer to help, it can make a big difference.

If you want it, then you'll have to refine your techniques and continue to learn. In my undergrad, I'd guess about 30% finished, half dropping out, half being kicked out.

normally i'd say move on, lesson learned, but a D+ is a fail in my book. this work, while basic at best, probably solved every element of your professor list of requirements and deserves in the very least a C. i'd argue the point vociferously, what do you have to loose? another point i'd like to point out - as a lesson learned - don't listen to your professors, if you do, try and understand why they say what they say and figure out why they're wrong.

take the opportunity to refocus, learn more, increase your skills, and come back. i've seen grade challenges and, as already indicated by rationalist, there are usually reasons that aren't being uncovered until the grade challenge runs its course - and it usually does not go in the student's favor.

if the model had been rough but you had shown throughout the studio that you were learning and growing, 'getting' what this prof was offering, i doubt you would have gotten the grade you got.

in my experience students often think their grade is because 'i did this wrong', 'this wasn't good', when in fact the instructor is looking at a trajectory from beginning of semester to end and (old fogey's experience notwithstanding) grading a holistic experience.

steven, a C would get the point across, but a D+ is an insult, if the professor dropped an F or an incomplete i would totally agree with you, but that grade is really lame and demoralizing.

wasn't it a C+, dropped to a D+ for being late?

we had the same thing at my school for missing deadlines. it is a good thing in my opinion.

a C doesn't get the point across if, in the instructor's judgment, the work is a D+. you guys act like grading is capricious. we agonized over grading.

you can't agonize over a D+, please. give the F and quit being a coward. if the work was a bit lacking, even though following every instruction from the critic, then the C is warranted. there are reviews, there are even mid-term reviews or evaluations to tell one where they stand. this kid should have been told he/she was performing at a marginal or barely marginal level and if they did not pull it together, they would fail. if not, then an INC is absolutely justified.

i failed a studio, and knew why i failed and never argued. in fact i never argued or appealed any grade, but i always knew that the grade matched the effort.

a D+ is a cowardice, plain and simple.

we just disagree on this point.

I completely agree with Steven Ward and was going to come into this thread to express that.

Case in point: often in critiques, if a student shows that they simply truly haven't mastered the concepts and principles needed to be learned in the studio, you'll hear the jury simply kind of give up on reviewing the content of the work and they'll start by criticizing the drawing and model quality instead. It's as though the jury is overwhelmed by how far behind the student is in terms of understanding the design concepts and their entry point into a conversation is to discuss the craft of the work. This affords them some minimum basis on which to give feedback to the student in a way that he/she can understand. (Hopefully then, if they are a good jury, they're able to move on to discuss the actual content of the project.)

Reading between the lines here, I am wondering if, in essence, this is what has happened in your grading situation with your professor. It may be that you are struggling so much in mastering the design content of the semester that, to the professor, the craft issue is simply the icing on the cake, if you will--and that this is what you are focusing on because it is harder for you to see the other, more abstract, less concrete areas in which you weren't able to succeed.

I am inclined to trust the professor's grading instincts, knowing, as Steven pointed out, how agonizing grading is. That's not to say, however, that un-earned marks don't happen sometimes--for that reason I would normally recommend challenging the grade anyway (if only to learn more about why it was given). I remain very surprised that there is no grade-challenge procedure at your school -- I do think it's the very first school I've heard of with no grade review process.

In any case, trust that a year off will do your design maturity some good, and apply yourself to learning how to master the design concepts in first year.

To that end : email your professor and ask him for advice on what to read / look at / draw during your off-year in order to master what you're going to learn again in first year.

beta, some schools will not allow the professor to grant an F outright (unless the student has two prior D's, or whatever reason they've put in place.)

(sorry beta, wrote my long response before seeing yours -- i mean I agree with SW's longer post above... didn't want it to look like i was jumping into a me-vs-you thing...)

zzyzx88, the instructor has offered help. follow through. may be the best 'learning moment' of the semester for you.

really, REALLY, we are going to grade students on MODEL CRAFT?! WTF?!

now, i know we have only this kid's say so, and an email, but come on...if model craft was the basis on which my grade was decided, i wouldn't be an architect now.

manta, i hear ya, and if that's the case then so be it, the rules are the rules.

To put it more bluntly than I did before, I think the model craft may be the wrong end of the stick. Or it's the red herring. Or whatever.

manta, even that's not acceptable. how is this kid supposed to get anything out of education, if the critic can't be honest about why the work is lacking?

the point of the review process is to be able to offer constructive criticism as to what is lacking and how to re-think the proposition. failing that, the professor, if unable to do comply with rudimentary studio dictates, should resign or reassess their own abilities.

You also have the option of going to the Dean of Students at your university. Giving you the benefit of the doubt, maybe there is a problem within your college that needs to be addressed. Unless you just totally bombed your first semester you should be given the opportunity to move on to at least the second semester and reevaluate then.

Ah, architecture school, where education somehow happens anyway, this process of effort and reward, somewhere off to the side of angry urination and noble agonizing...

dont most undergrad arch studios have "weed-out" studios like this?

my undergrad was at a very small and liberal program, with not too many students

but i always heard at other schools and when i was doing my grad work, that there are these hardcore weed out studios, where half the class fails or has to retake it again


but i tend to agree, if you had a C+ and had late work or work not handed in, it sounds like that is where your D+ comes from

the one sure thing every arch student needs to realize is you will have a real hard time complaining about a grade if you dont even hand in all the required work
usually you should have what is required, and then more added on


repeating a studio isnt the end of the world, and will actually help you be a better student having the experience
it may seem like a real pain right now, and is not the optimal situation to be in, but take it as a learning lesson of what is actually expected to get through these reviews

i remember first year being all about figuring out what your process is for finishing your work
your projects will not be your best work now anyway, you are still learning


try not to go overboard with any complaining (it sounds like you are not overreacting and making yourself the bad guy, which is a good approach)
during my grad studies, there were students who literally did not bother to present their work at the final presentation, claimed a fake illness, then spent the winter working on it
then did the same thing in the spring, and spent the summer working on it
they got away with it due to loud complaining and commotion causing
its not worth it to be that guy (not saying you are)

i also heard tons of, oh, i only got a B in studio, where is the dean, this is ridiculous
its all not worth it to me

good luck though, that sounds like a tough situation

you should have hired someone to build the model for you.

perhaps a grad student? since that is "tradition."

beta, re: your point above about the professor's obligation to be very clear about why the student is failing...

I completely, 100% agree. This is actually a failing of many professors, I think, and it in part stems from the fact that frankly that is a difficult skill and many architecture professors are not actually very talented as teachers, or don't feel they need to work on clarity of communication, which is crucial to teaching.

I had been making the assumption that the professor had in fact explained how the student was doing, earlier when they had the mid-review and the professor told the student he was giving the student a C+; I realize now that's just an assumption, so I don't know. I do think however it often is the case that the teacher clearly explains these things, but the student is not very capable of understanding and grabs hold of the one concrete thing they can understand, like "craft".

In other words -- the teacher is obligated to be as clear as humanly possible -- but that still doesn't mean the student is going to get it.

"you should have hired someone to build the model for you."

Seriously. How would cheating help this kid?

it should never be a surprise to have a grade like that

if it is, it is either a major failing of the teacher to not properly express how the student was doing

or it is the student being blind to any advice or criticism given during the semester



but again, and this is without knowing the situation personally, if you were told you had a C+ and at the final review, you dont even have all the requirements, getting a grade of a D+ should not be a surprise

its a harsh lesson to learn, but a valuable one

i have been in about 10 studios total, undergrad and grad, and the one constant, is that if you dont have all the required drawings or models, you open yourself up to criticism that you really cant argue against

if you had subpar modeling skills according to your professor, AND you didnt even finish all of the required drawings, it is perfectly acceptable for the professor to dock you a letter grade

you may have worked really really hard, but you didnt work smart
(again, if that is the case, i dont know the situation and dont want to criticize you for something you didnt do)
one valuable lesson in arch school is how to prioritize and finish the work required
it sometimes takes a failing semester to learn that
not necessarily a bad thing, if you view it in a way to help you in the future

"you should have hired someone to build the model for you."

"Seriously. How would cheating help this kid?"


it really wouldnt have helped at all
especially first year, when you are supposed to be building your skills, you should never get someone else to do your work for you
even just production work



if you are above building your own model, the other work that you actually do better be so amazingly brilliant as to actually justify not having to do the work everyone else has to do
if anyone in their first year or first studio actually believes this of themselves, they are seriously kidding themselves

How is hiring someone else to build the model cheating? How is that any different than paying for the services of a laser cutter? It's your fucking design. Donald Judd never built his works. Does that mean that his pieces have less merit? History has not judged it as such.

I wish I would have been smart enough to think of that when I was in undergrad. You do what you have to do to finish. Academia has it all fucked up because they tell you to do it all by yourself. When do you ever do anything all by yourself in this industry. Architectural Education is a fucking joke.

z88 - hopefully you learned a lesson here. The true test is will it happen again? How are you going to play the game?

Wasn't model-building skill what part of the grade for the class was based on?

yes ,but unless you boiled down the animal hides, hooves to a glue like collagen, made from glue pots that you threw and fired yourself, to build the model with, well it's really cheating, isn't it.

being a first year student in your first studio, you should build your own model


these design studios are not just based on your ideas
its also production based



again
i am not saying hiring someone to build your model is always wrong
but the rest of the work you actually do yourself better be so amazing as to make up for that

it sounds like in this case, model building skills were part of the criteria
how would this professor have responded if this student said, oh i paid so and so to build my model?

wurden
i see your point, and it is valid
but cmon now, to not even be able to finish all the requirements for the class is this guys problem, not having poor model making skills.



i never didnt fulfill the basic requirements for the final review in any studio i had
its not an impossible amount of work where 1 person cant get it done, otherwise no one else would get it done

half of what you learn in studio classes is how to manage your time and work productively so you dont spend 2 days on one minor detail and then cant finish everything else.

if your professor says you need X, Y, & Z for the final presentation, and you only show up with X & Y and he feels X is produced sloppily, that is your problem, and no matter how many hours you put in, it is still your problem in how you worked