lessons of a third-year

As a going-on-fourth-year architecture student, I can look back and say that I think my brain has been overhauled. I feel that I have now been sufficiently trained to see and consider e v e r y t h i n g. I cannot walk or bike or drive or sit anywhere without dissecting the room, street, or park in which I presently exist into its constituent parts – those that I know of and have seen used (un)successfully in project XYZ, those that are new to me, and those that I dislike – and then judge each part’s and the greater whole’s purpose and success. I’d tell you it’s exhausting or annoying if it was, but I can’t.

Since beginning my schooling in the UTSOA this training has hyper-developed my natural audio-visual learning style as I am expected to recall Building DEF by I Also Wear Cool Glasses and its structure, environmental controls, and location for impromptu use in a review at any given time. Lectures consist of a presentation with hundreds of images, hopefully laid out in a consistent format as my more anal professors would demand. Class discussions compare and contrast theories and ideas across countries and decades.

At first, I was completely lost. I felt like everyone was speaking another language and all I could do was hold on with the few words I knew, but it all comes easier now. Everyone will always know something that I don’t, and I think that’s the point. Now, however, when someone refers to a sexy section that Another Designer Photographed in Black published in PERIODICAL from an Exhibition with White Walls, I might know what they’re talking about.