lake-eyes:

I like drinking coffee alone, and reading alone. I like riding the bus alone, and walking home alone. I like eating alone, and listening to music alone. It gives me time to think, and set my mind free.

But when I see a mother with her child, a girl with her lover, or a friend laughing with their best friend, I realize that even though I like being alone, I don’t fancy being lonely. The sky is beautiful, but the people are sad. I just need someone who won’t run away.

favorite ever

(Source: buddhacoffee, via dreamonthelights)

(Source: hopeinspiresme, via iusedtobefat)

mavertrick:

City of Angels

(via acupofteainalovelycity)

life-of-an-architecture-student:

architectureofhappiness:

fatinely:

tipsforarchitectureschool:

I’M HERE TO CLEAR A FEW THINGS UP

So some of you might have stumbled upon this hilarious little ditty from Yahoo within the ongoings of your life as an architecture student on the internet. 

At first, I thought maybe architecture was stated to be the #1 Unwanted Degree by Yahoo Education because of things like the copious amount of work, long sleepless studio hours, and countless opportunities to cut yourself while building a model.  These are all things that, like any professional degree, come with the territory, but this article seems to be written with a specific agenda, which in my opinion renders it invalid.

Let’s break this down together.

“Earning a bachelor’s in architecture might impress a lot of people, but according to a 2012 study by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, “Hard Times, College Majors, Unemployment and Earnings: Not All College Degrees Are Created Equal,” it might not impress a lot of employers.”

First of all they said a Bachelor’s Degree in architecture.  Many of the people who get a Bachelor’s degree in architecture go back to school to get their Master’s.  So if they are taking the numbers of unemployed graduates after earning their Bachelor’s, the unemployment rate is probably low because the majority of them are still in school and aren’t even seeking jobs yet.  Plus they did not specify which degree they were referring to.  A Bachelor of science degree in architecture is a non professional degree which would encourage you to enroll in a Master’s program before hitting the workforce.  It might not impress employers??  It would be hard to impress any employer when you’re not looking for a job yet.  So these “facts” may be skewed a bit.  

And that can be tough to take, says Lynn, since architecture is such an industry-specific major. “If there’s not a job offer waiting when you graduate, then it can be very frustrating because it can be very hard to maneuver into another career path with this degree due to its narrow focus,” says Lynn.

This one made me laugh pretty good. :)  So basically they are calling architecture an “Industry specific major with a narrow focus.”  Yes, because all we do is build houses.  All day, everyday, we just play with our little AUTOcad program and build houses.  Pardon my sarcastic tongue, but I would like to point out that architecture, as a major, contains one of the most versatile curriculums and the list of obtainable skill-sets combat even the highest ranking of professional degrees.  Here is a list of skills you learn while in architecture school:

- Research and analytical skills

- Verbal and written communication skills

- Ability to conceptualize and understand spatial relationships

- Ability to define and address complex problems, using creativity

- Awareness of the multifaceted circumstances surrounding a project, including cultural influences, environmental, social and political concerns

- Understand the importance of combining utility with aesthetics

- Knowledge and awareness of the construction industry

- Negotiation with vendors and clients

- Design skills, including the ability to visually communicate ideas to others

- Computer skills - Including everything from Microsoft Word and Keynote to advance 3d modeling software (**See bottom for reference**)

- Project Management and leadership skills

- Critical thinking and problem solving skills

- Business development and decision making skills

- Economic analyzation

- How to open and maintain a professional practice

- Marketing and brand identity skills

…I’m honestly getting tired of writing, but you get the point.

Perhaps that’s the reason the “Hard Times” study found a 13.9 percent unemployment rate among recent architecture grads. The study’s co-author, Dr. Anthony P. Carnevale, says this is due to the national collapse in the housing industry.

Come on Yahoo you’re better than this…  If the architecture degree is the #1 unwanted degree because of the national collapse in the housing industry, that means that their entire hypothesis is time specific, not because this degree lacks essential core values diminishing it’s worth. 

The best part is when they say to Earn a Business Administration degree instead!  That sure doesn’t sound like a politically charged statement. (Sarcasm Intended)  In fact, I think that might be dumbest thing I have ever heard.  That is like telling someone who wants to be a surgeon that they would have a better chance of getting a job at Wal-mart.  

“They have so many opportunities. Pick an industry, any industry - pharmaceutical industry, banking, technology, energy industry, health care industry - they all hire business majors.” says Lynn

Look Lynn, I hate to burst your bubble here, but I guarantee that on the design end I would be able to work with any of those fields with my degree in architecture.  Every one of those industries need buildings, branding and design, and many other business attributes that I would be able to offer with a degree in architecture.  

But thats not even the point.

I am a designer.  Those other industries might be great for other people, but not for me.  If I wanted to be a banker or work as a health care administrator, maybe I would have enrolled in a business administration major, but it is within my interests to be a creator of the built environment.

We don’t go to school for architecture because of all of the plentiful job offers we will receive when we graduate.  We do it because we are different.  We don’t do it because it is easy.  We will go up and go down, see the unemployment rate rise and drop, and will see riches as well as be broke as hell, but we do this because we love it more than anything else.  If we wanted a “real job” there are a million other things we can do, but what we do as architects is not a job.  It may sound stupid, but what we do is a calling.  We are the designers of a life worth living and we make people happy with what we do.

I understand the article, and statistics are statistics, but choosing a better word choice within your titles would help maintain the integrity of your argument.  “Don’t bother earning these 5 degrees” provides the less informed audience with a skewed reality of this degree.  How do you think high graduates who want to pursue a career in architectural design will feel after reading your article?  They might think that this degree is worthless based off of the title of the article, but a degree in architecture is not worthless.  

Architecture is a calling, and it is not for everybody, but for people like me; I would say it is actually the #1 MOST wanted degree.

- Mark Perrett, tipsforarchitectureschool

———————————————————————————————-

Read original article from Yahoo here: “Don’t bother earning these 5 degrees”

**Reference Article** for architecture degree skills

Okay now to make things clear:

I’ll begin with an example. I was in a train, from Modane, a tiny village in France where I was working on the restauration of a fort, going to Paris, when I sat near to this lady. She was coming from Milan, and she was Moroccan. I started talking to her and then she noticed I had some weird kind of scars on my hand, due to working with whitewash and sand. This is how the conversation went like:

“-Oh wow, what is this on your arms?!

-Oh, this, no big deal, I’ve been working under the sun for 2 weeks, with sand and whitewash, so my skin got a bit irritated, it hurts but it’s okay!

-But why, are you a construction worker or?

-I’ve been studying architecture for a year, and I came here for some kind of training, our school demands that we do this, it’s cool!

-But why, why are you doing this, it seems too hard, why this architecture thing? Why not be a… secretary, or a lawyer!”

That’s when it hit me. People know NOTHING about what we do. They just go and buy or rent houses and go wandering in the streets looking at buildings without ever realizing that somebody had to go through a lot of pain before actually conceiving that.

What I’m trying to say is that, unless if the person speaking about this field is in fact FROM this field, you don’t even have to listen to him/her. They think that what we do is so easy and could be done by anyone. Let’s just take a small, simple room, with a door and a window. A “normal” person would just draw 4 walls, a door and a window! But we would think about the material of the walls, insulation, the way the door opens, where we would put it to gain space, the area of the window, its type, how it opens, and why, the structure, etc etc. Now this, is a small room. This small room might be in a house. Or a hotel, a sports center, an aquatic center, an office, a green house, a library, a school, etc etc

We would have to think about all of that in less than a year, it would have to be perfect, perfectly drawn, with a great model, a well structured speech, and finally, we would have to convince an audience.

What we do is very hard, very important, and without that people would just be lying in the streets, dying, literally, but we’re so used to doing that that we actually forget how amazingly hard it is.

Well I could go on with this forever but anyway. The thing is we shouldn’t take into consideration what other people may tell us about what we do, because it’s crap, especially if those people work for Yahoo, because Yahoo is just a bunch of losers who write crappy articles.

As well as agreeing with the previous comments; the whole of this article is meaningless, so it seems silly to even pay attention to it. Especially when talking about architecture. If you want to be an architect you need an architecture degree, simple as that. Since architecture (I’m gonna be talking about the UK here) works on a fairly strict tiered system to become chartered, you literally cannot be an architect without an architecture degree. Whether you impress the employer or not isn’t the case because you won’t even get an interview. In this case if you want to be an architect, business administration is the useless degree. Every degree other than architecture is a useless degree. I will add that if you become an architect you have to deal with this crap all the time, 90% of people will never value you, no-one outside architecture will ever understand what you do and you’ll constantly be made to feel worthless (even though you aren’t) but y’know that’s just the price you have to pay. If you want to be an architect then a BArch is not just a useful degree it’s a vital degree. If you don’t want do be an architect then don’t do the degree! Do something else that you want to do! Or if you want, go ahead, do a vague-cloudy-capitalist-compromise-gold-digging-willy-loman-box-ticking business administration degree instead. Maybe if you’re lucky you’ll get a job working at Yahoo news. Good riddance to ya. 

Like I’ve stated before. With an architecture degree, there are many options. You don’t have to work for a firm and build houses/buildings all your life.
We are designers, inventors, and creators.
Go out and do something with your creative mind!
Screw Yahoo.

(via life-of-an-architecture-student)

bonkersforpotter:

watchmelightenup:

lightspeedsound:

A DREAM came true for a ‘true’ Harry Potter fan, Evanna Lynch (11), when she received a copy of the latest Harry Potter book signed by author JK Rowling, one of just a half dozen in the country.

‘The Order of the Phoenix’ was released for sale at 7.30am last Saturday, and after consultation between the Lynch family, Our Lady of Lourdes hospital and Eason’s booksellers, Evanna was allowed out of hospital for an hour to collect her book. (x)

OH MY GOD

this was in 2003

she was in the hospital for anorexia

JK Rowling then wrote to her personally

and then she got the role of Luna.

I mean if someone were to write this in a fictional story everybody would be like “that is so not believable.” 

I think it’s beautiful that she was promised the role of Luna Lovegood if she got better, to which she then went on to recover and permanently beat anorexia.

I love her so much. 

(Source: musicalhogwarts, via dreamonthelights)

did-you-kno:

Source

(via did-you-kno)

heathermorris:

i’m one of those annoying people who’s always like “omg i know that actor from somewhere omg i recognize them whAT WERE THEY IN” when watching tv shows/movies who then proceeds to look it up on their phone and inform everyone that said actor was an extra in an episode of some stupid 90s sitcom once

(via cats-0n-fire)

did-you-kno:

Source

(via did-you-kno)

(Source: grimmergrimmer)

katespadeny:

is it an appropriate time for shake shack yet? (Taken with Instagram at Madison Square Park)

theabsolution:

‘Elsbethen Site’ (Memmingen, Germany) by trint + kreuder d.n.a