what's wrong with china?

How the hell does somebody spend $200,000 on an architectural education ?

how can you afford law school if you cant afford loan payments?

i think about it at least once every day, for at least 30 seconds.

I'm with evanc, cuz I'm cnsidering goba relocation.

Well it is pretty easy to spend 200,000 grand on undergrad + post grad... unless of course you go to Oklahoma State or some shitty public school like that (disclaimer... I actually know nothing about Oklahoma State)

Just invision... Wash U for 5 years at 25,000 grand a year AND an IVY league grad school.... was that really that complicated?

Anywho, hoped that cleared that up. comb...

AS for China... well it has its good days and bad days.

Essentally I feel like I am on an involutairy starvation diet... I am up in Beijing which is essentially like likving in China 100 years ago... NOT very modernized at all and very very few Westerners and Western things. Plus everything that is imported for westerners is about 10 times as much as it should be...

(And this is just me) I HATE the cold!!! This winter it was -19 for practically 3 months and the summer gets up to 40 (C).

ALSO.... and this is the biggest thing that gets to me. The internet!!! Everything is banned... no blogging, no facebook, no youtube... NONE of that stuff is accessible. Plus I am a LOST junkie so I download it on iTunes... When I lived in Europe it took maybe 20 minutes to download an episode. Here it often takes many days. The web inside china is fast, so if you want to look at things in Mandarin then n problem, however if you go to an american site the government has purposely slowed it to discourage its use by the Chinese. For example... I can't download study material from the NCARB website unless I pay for a VPN service every month... which I do.

HOWEVER, there are lots of jobs here. You wont make nearly as much as in the US but at least you'll be working. The Chinese people are much friendlier than I thought they would be, but at the same time that sort of wears off.

I have been to HK a few times and I love it!!! ( And the internet isn't banned there!) I could definitely see myself being quite happy in HK for a few years. I think that I would like Shanghai as well... but Beijing is NOT my cup of tea. If I stay here I will definitely try to move to HK!

BUT BAck to my original question?

What the hell else could i do if I don't go back to school?

If you really want out of the profession for some amount of time you could do a combination of 2 options: sell you house and live with your parents while going to a law school close by. if there are any decent ones where youre from.

But try to picture yourself doing that and being a lawyer, it might suck even more. they are not visual people.

That explains it ;)

I went to China for interviews last month.... After 1 day in Beijing I canceled all my interviews there and went to the Great Wall instead. I could immediately tell that Beijing wasn't for me.

Shanghai, however, was a blast. I took a job there and I'm moving in a few weeks.

1327, I have worked in the past as an "information architect" for building websites. I think it's a great application of our skill sets in a different medium.

And, best part is there are actually jobs out there.......

Looks like you killed your dream early on my friend.

Others here wil disagree though and think $200,000 in debt is "doable".

Let us know how this turns out. Sorry to hear of your passing.

I just want to ask.

Who told you it was a wise decision to take on $200,000 in debt for a job in architecture?

evanc, did you manage to get interviews from outside China?

1327 I totally understand where you are at. I graduated fall of 2008 just when things were taking the plunge and offices were not really sure things were going other than they were not hiring. After a few months of sending applications out everywhere I could and slowly watching the remains of my savings account vanish, I had to face the facts and move back home in December of 2008.

Flash forward to today where I am still living at home...unemployed. I worked for a while at an office I had worked at before Grad. School (and $90k of loans) but it wasn't long before the recession spread from the big cities to everywhere so being the last hired, I was one of the first to be let go. Aside from some independent work here and there, it's been months of aimlessly sending out apps with little to no response.

I really have zero interest in moving to China for work which seems to be the only place things are happening right now. I keep hoping that next month will be the month but that doesn't seem to be the case ever. When July hits it will mark 1 year since I have been employed and in December 2 years since I moved back home. If something doesn't happen by 2011 I think I will be considering other options. What I do not know but I can't spend the rest of my life waiting for jobs.

hawkin, i applied to one job posting on a whim, and had a telephone interview. they wanted me to come out to meet in person, and suggested that I line up some other meetings so it would be worth the trip. I did - took a 6 day "vacation" to china, went to 5 interviews, and got 3 job offers.

so, yes, i managed to "get" interviews outside of China - but I doubt you could find a job without going there first.

Wow that's great, evanc. Congrats.

I am currently living in Asia (since creditcrunched) but my dream since high school is living in China for a while! I love it :)

Weren't u living in Rome now?

thanks. i'm still in Rome --- which is great --- but it's tough to live here on an architect's salary, hence the move. Still, I can't complain.

evanc... that is awesome about your job! Congrats. Shanghai is much superior to Beijing and the climate is much more doable. If you come visit Beijing and the Great Wall shoot me an email and I could take you out on the town. It is quite funny that there are so few white architects here that just meeting one in passing can make you instant friends.

As for the 20000 grand ... I don't actually owe 200... I had a lot of scholarships so I only owe about 70ish... which is doable but annoying.

I just can't imagine not being an architect... My dream and the entire reason for the Ivy league Masters was to teach, but I also graduated in 2008 and entered into the overcrowded applicant field with no teaching experience so that has been my stumbling block there. As well as universities seem to have a lot more boxes to tick in order to be considered these days ie . registration (in progress), PhD (would love to but...) and having a highly published body of research. I don't even know where to start.

But I think I need to face the facts and try to go another road than practicing in the profession... I am thinking of moving home and doing some DIY/house flipping. I have a friend that made 40 grand flipping a house, but that has been a few years ago... I still think it is possible to fix up and then rent rather than flip.

Hawkin where in asia are you?

I think it's a little ridiculous to say you hate all of china. It's so big and so varied that I'm sure you can find somewhere you like. Maybe beijing's just not the place for you. It seems to me that students usually love beijing but a lot of people coming for jobs prefer shanghai. As for the food, cheap as hell beijing duck and delicious chuar everywhere? I don't really know how you can complain. Then again I went to some shitty public school so what do i know.

also for hawkin, i actually managed to get my first job in china from the us, but I really wouldn't recommend it except maybe as a stepping stone. that first job was terrible....

feels like we've had a similar discussion (about career changes) so many times...

i'm not ready to give up on architecture but i'm giving a lot of thought about how to 'reconstruct' our practice so that we're not as dependent on outside clients (and especially public clients) for revenue generation. one thing we've realized is that our basic mindset is wired to seek 'more' in every project that we do and that we're not very good at down and dirty type projects. before the crash, we tended to get compensation commensurate to what we were generating for our clients. now... harder to get the compensation when so many others will practically give away their fees just to have backlog.

look, if a talent as great as charles eames could do architecture for 10 years and then walk away to focus on product design... let's just say i can deeply empathize with his situation...(and yes he walked away because he couldn't stand not being in control of the production end of his design labors.)

nichao... perhaps you should read all my postings and then you would see that I do like Shanghai and HK... and never once did I say "I hate all of China" perhaps attention to detail alludes you... you must be a Republican.

wow, the man with 20 posts labels another poster with a total of 4 posts.

Talk about a shot in the dark.

Starting to smell flamebaiter/troll for some reason.