hey everyone welcome back to the channel my name is ashley and i'm an architect in Ontario and in
this video we're going to be talking about the five things that i wish i knew before starting
architecture school and toward the end of the video i have a bonus tip that i'll be sharing with
you now some of you might be starting architecture school in the fall and you might be a bit
anxious and nervous about starting architecture school and you're not sure what to look forward to
or you know what to keep out for so in this video i'm going to be sharing five tips that i
wish i knew before i started architecture school which might be helpful for you on your journey
so if you're interested make sure to like the video and of course make sure to subscribe
if you want to see more videos on the channel and it helps me out because it lets me know
that you enjoy this type of content now if you're interested let's get started
let's start with the first tip tip number one be close to the school now this sounds pretty basic
but something to keep in mind especially if you're starting in the fall that architecture school is
an intense program it does require a lot of hours and it requires a lot of your focus so
one of the things that i would recommend is to try to live as close as possible to the campus don't
live an hour or hour and a half away by public transportation because that will be taxing to you
on a daily basis because you'll have to commute in the morning and then at night as well it is quite
an intensive program and you'll find yourself commuting a lot at night so it's important to
be as close as possible to the campus so that it's easier for you on a day-to-day basis you
don't have to commute as much and you can focus on your studies which is most important so it really
allows you to focus now i understand how it can be very expensive to live on campus that you can find
affordable ways to live close to campus but live you know not too far where it's so taxing for you
to commute on a daily basis now this was one of the mistakes that i made when i first started
architecture school i lived about an hour and a half away from public transportation i had to take
several buses to get to the architecture school and that started to become very taxing to do that
in the morning and then in the evening and then sometimes you have to work too late it's not very
safe to be commuting when you're so exhausted falling asleep on buses and so on so i highly
recommend trying to find accommodation close to the program and of course as you make friends you
can also find ways of teaming up with similar students that are in the program and that's
another thing to keep in mind is that students and other programs might not be working as intensely
as architecture students so we don't have as much time to party as other programs in the university
so it's important that when you find roommates to live with that they're all from the same program
and they're going to have similar deadlines as you so you're all kind of working away
on your projects and you're seeing focus without distractions and other distractions from roommates
so i would recommend if you are getting roommates that they also be within the architecture program
and they're involved in an intensive type of program because that will help you to stay focused
and living close to the architecture building tip number two time management now this might be
difficult during your first year of architecture school because everything will be very new to you
and if you are just starting architecture school this could be a little bit hard to grasp because
you're learning a lot of new programs and there's so much and it could be overwhelming try to be
mindful of your time and to be mindful of using your time productively you know architecture
school can be very intense yes and there could be times that you have to do all-nighters
but looking back all-nighters is not the best way to work because at a certain period of time you're
not really being productive and the quality of work is just going downhill so you're better off
to be have more of a consistent schedule where you at least get six hours of sleep rather than having
one or two nights with no sleep and then you over sleep another night so it's best to kind
of stay consistent and plan your projects ahead of time and so if you know you have a major deadline
coming up for studio or for a design project that you know that's going to require a lot of your
time then try to plan your sleep accordingly and pace yourself and try not to procrastinate because
that could be the worst when you procrastinate just try to start on the projects as soon as
possible so that you can fully work things out and make sure to really time out your projects and
your courses so for example if you're finding it hard to do six or eight courses in one term then
think of doing some of the electives during the summer to help you out with the course load so if
you can't if you find that it's too overwhelming to do the electives and the core courses
all in one semester then look at ways of possibly doing your electives in the summer so that could
alleviate yourself during the semester to really focus on the core courses and to deliver the best
work that you can do so look at ways of doing that and really spend time in looking at how you want
to spend that time and so time management is really important and i would recommend
planning out your time doing to-do lists and that will also help you by doing to-do lists it will
help you to not procrastinate because i find also sometimes that you procrastinate because you're
overwhelmed with all the work that's coming up so it helps to break up the work into bite sizes
that you can chip away at it and i find when i do a list and i can start to cross out items
you start to really feel good and you kind of feel like you're getting toward
the end of the work and you start to see progress which is really important as well so that's one
way to kind of deal with that and also incorporate your time management as well so part of this time
management i would look at ways of using your summer really start to develop your 3d skills
your 2d illustration skills photoshop skills and so on and now you have so many options to learn
for free you can use youtube which at my time when i did my undergrad believe it or not there was no
youtube i feel so old by saying that but there was no youtube at the time so i didn't have that
luxury to just you know build up skills for free in that sense so now there's so many resources
out there that you can take advantage and you can even start now before you start your fall semester
you can start building some of the skills before you get started into the program and start to plan
ways that you can use your summer breaks to do that and of course you can use your summer breaks
as well to you know work full-time and to earn some money so you can fund your education as well
tip number three take care of yourself now this sounds pretty basic but make sure you get sleep
you drink plenty of water and you eat healthy now that sounds so simple but believe it or not
it's actually very difficult to do when you are an architecture school and i can say that every
architecture student is guilty of this because we tend to just work away and sometimes we don't even
notice the time and it just flies and we're just working on projects trying to deliver the best
you know studio project and design project and we're just working away and we don't really pay
attention that we're not taking care of ourselves now if you don't take care of yourself and you're
not mindful of your immune system and just keeping yourself healthy then you're not going to be able
to deliver the best work so really take care of yourself during this time try to eat well try
not to eat so much junk food and just try to have more of a balance now sleep that can be difficult
to get eight hours of sleep when you are in architecture school but what i found really helped
for me was to you know not necessarily overdo it one day and then over sleep the other day because
that's what a lot of architecture students will do is that you'll work you know madly
until your deadline and then you just over sleep and it's not great for your body so i found that
being more consistent so when i know i have a major deadline coming up for a studio project
and i know i need to put in a lot of my time i'll start to instead of sleeping eight hours
i might do six or five hours and i spread that out versus just condensing it into one you know two or
three days uh where i'm only sleeping one or two hours and so i would spread that out and i try to
consistently get sleep toward that deadline now i've seen students during my time pass
out on presentations because they weren't able to be healthy and take care of themselves they
were dehydrated and so when they're presenting their projects they're so nervous as well that
doesn't help and they're exhausted because they haven't been sleeping and they haven't
been eating and they've just been forgetting about all the essential items that you need as a human
so they've just forgotten about that and so when they get to the presentation they just collapse
and they pass out i've seen this myself and i really want to encourage you to be mindful and to
take care of yourself because this is not a race it's all about being a journey and you want to get
out of architecture school standing you want to be somewhat healthy by the end of it because you have
a lot more things to do afterwards so this is an important tip as well so i recommend to take care
of yourself number four a good laptop now this one is very important because your laptop is going to
be a tool that you're going to use throughout your four years if you're doing your undergrad
and if you're doing your master's it could be your two-year program so it's something
that you're going to need it's your bread and butter where you're going to do all your work
now i'm saying laptop because a laptop is a lot more versatile when you are a student
especially if you are doing your education in a different location from your hometown so you're
traveling a laptop is very convenient and then of course it's also very convenient because when you
are presenting your designs to you're having desk scripts i should say so when you're having desk
crits with your professor you can actually bring your laptop and show your design work and you
don't always need to print things out although i do recommend printing out you know your plans and
so on so that you can nail down your line weights and all of that but you don't have to do that as
often when you have a laptop that you can bring with you to illustrate the design to a desktop for
a desk crit now a laptop is really important and i went through again at least three to four laptops
in my undergrad and then my masters i went to i had i think two laptops one that burnt out on the
first year which was incredible it was a gaming computer and it burnt out and then the second one
i had better luck and i still have that laptop now i'm gonna be doing a separate video on the
laptops that i recommend based on my experience of using them and i've had quite a few laptops so
i guess i can be helpful to you with selecting the right laptop for architecture specifically
and so i would use the laptop to do 2d work 3d work rendering and so on so it really does
get a lot of use so it's probably the one of the most important investments that you'll make when
you are going to architecture school and one of the things that you do want to spend the time
researching and getting right because i didn't get it right i had to go through a lot of computers
and they just literally they died on me from being used quite a lot and they just couldn't keep
up with the work so that is something that i will talk about more on specific details
on which laptops that i recommend on a separate video number five build a community of friends
now this is important because again architecture school is intense now when i say intense
don't be discouraged by that it's still a lot of fun you still enjoy the process especially if you
enjoy architecture you're gonna have fun but it is hard work it's not a walk in the park definitely
but then again what is i'm sure becoming a lawyer has its difficulties as well and becoming a doctor
and all and so many other disciplines that i'm not going to get into but nothing in life is
easy so there's going to be some challenges now because architecture school is intense i recommend
building a community a community of friends and really taking advantage of that because you are
in it together so it's important to build that community where you can also when you are
struggling with a particular project you can share notes now when in my undergrad there is always one
friend in the group that was really good at one particular subject and because we were all trying
to focus in on the design the main core courses of the course of specifically studio what we did with
all the other core courses is whoever was really good at that specific topic we would you know rely
on them to share their notes with us and exchange information and so on and so that became a nice
community where we can share information and content and work together as a team
because the reality is when you start working in the field of architecture you have to be a team
player and it's all about working in a team and having those people skills so this is also a great
opportunity to start building those skills while you are in architecture school so really take
advantage and be mindful and start to build that community because that really will help you to
get through the program and it also makes it fun it's a lot more fun when you're working together
versus working alone number six and this is a bonus tip don't stress about the details focus
on the big picture and this is really specific to when you are working on design projects for studio
and even other projects within the core courses of architecture school don't waste your time i don't
want to say waste your time but focus so much on the details and then you kind of forget and
you lose touch of the bigger picture so instead of focusing on these little details that take
hours to figure out you should first start with the big picture see how the presentation
is going to unfold look at the bigger picture of how you're going to deliver that content
and then start to build out what items you want to illustrate to build that story versus starting
at a smaller scale and then losing touch of what the bigger storyline is and what the narrative
is that you want to communicate of your design so really spend the time on focusing the big picture
and don't stress and worry about the little details so those are the five tips including
the bonus tip that i would recommend if you are starting architecture school to keep in
mind when you're going into the program and of course you're never gonna know everything don't
be afraid about starting the journey have fun with it enjoy if you enjoy architecture you will have a
blast everything else will come naturally and you will figure it out but if i knew about these tips
that would help me even further to progress and to not worry about again all the small things and
to focus on the bigger picture of things so if you found this video to be helpful make sure to
subscribe and make sure to like the video and if you want to hear more from me you can also find me
on my website www.ashleyeusebio.com and i have a newsletter which you can sign up on that website
to get monthly updates from me and i'll be sharing more information and content that will help you on
your journey of becoming an architect or even just on the journey of architecture itself so make sure
to do that and of course feel free to comment down below let me know where you are at on your
journey are you starting architecture school in the fall or perhaps you're already in the midst
of it and you're entering maybe second third year or perhaps you're getting into masters let me know
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