The Lesson to Unlearn (2019)

Except architecture students. I've often tried to put a finger on how the gauntlet of architecture school changes people. I'd worked around architects for about a decade before going to A-school and wondered how they made the stupid ideas they sometimes make when I looked with an engineering mindset.

But I think A-school is four or five years of the un-learning Graham describes.

At the pin-up at the end of a two week project, there's no faking it (though not to say there isn't plenty of bullshit). It's clear who worked long and who phoned in.

Because it is clear in studio who has put in twenty hours since last class and who has put in four. Between who has suffered doing it wrong and who has only been looking for a shortcut.

Pulling an all nighter the first night of a new module is only plausible if the work product is open ended. Only possible if it is possible for someone to due the best they can.

This doesn't happen until the end of the STEM education conveyor belt. Until its machinery knocks all the unroteable bad apples out. Until most all that is left are those for whom good grades produce sufficient joy.

An 89 on my test is the same as the 89 on yours. But your B+ pin-up is great and poor in different ways than my B+ is great and poor. It's the possibility of greatness that drives the all nighter. Well that and beers in the studio.