Week in the life of a 20-year old 2nd year Architecture Student studying and living in Christchurch, New Zealand
Written anonymously, Edited by Aliya @archistudentnotes
This week we have a week in the life submission from a 20-year old 2nd year Architecture Student studying and living in Christchurch, New Zealand.
This anonymous writer was actually the first ArchiWeek submission we had back in August so it feels right to end the year with another of their submissions.
Would you have tackled the week any differently?
Monday
Monday was a holiday, so I was going to spend the day doing homework, but instead I ended up spending the whole time not really doing anything because I have been so exhausted lately (end of year type exhausted but also been having some pain for the last couple weeks which has been making me more tired as well).
Note from Aliya @archistudentnotes: If you are in pain or more tired than usual - definitely get it checked out. I know from personal experience how easy it is to put off looking into my own health because I had something due, or because there was a deadline at work. Get it sorted!
However, I did come up with some ideas over the weekend while I was at work, so I wasn’t hugely worried that I wasn’t doing anything and I clearly needed the break.
Tuesday
Tuesdays I have my tech class in the morning, so I went to that.
We had a lecture and then afterwards my group for our assignment started working out how to build our model. Our assignment is on shell structures at the moment, and so we had to pick a shell structure to pretty much do a case study on and build a model of it.
When figuring out what structure to do, because my group knows I really like curves, they let me find a structure (I ended up giving them a few options), and we ended up choosing the Heydar Aliyev Centre from Zaha Hadid. (Yes I’m aware, we are crazy for picking this… we realised after choosing it that it’s a lot harder than it looks…)
We started to try and find some floorplans and stuff so we could print it out to scale, which is also actually a lot harder than it looks because we wanted dimensions as well and couldn’t really find anything. So we just had to make do with what we had. We ended up finishing about 2:30pm since some of us had other commitments for later in the day.
After I went home, I went to a doctors appointment where I spent $58 to be told that I just needed to do more exercise because apparently that’s the cause of my pain for the last few weeks… (I know this isn’t architecture related but like it’s frustrating because it’s so much money as a student and for nothing helpful).
But anyway… after that, I got home and rested for a while because once again, I’m so exhausted. And then I tried to get some of my design work done before Wednesday’s class.
Wednesday
Cool, now it’s Wednesday.
I had design class in the morning, where they talked to us a bit about accessibility, how it’s important and telling us that we need to design around accessibility. Then they let us be, and we did our work.
I managed to get a bit done, but only later did I realise that I wasn’t really moving forward with my work, and there was still a lot to do. (But we shall get back to this).
Note from Aliya@ archistudentnotes: It is so important to be self aware, great that our writer noticed and moved onto something else.
After class, my tech group stayed back to get some more of our model done/prepared. We printed out some more of the floorplans, first at the wrong scale (so many pages to throw out 🙃) and then finally at the right scale. Which because the building is huge it doesn’t fit on A3 paper for the scale we need, so we had to print it using Adobe Acrobat to print the whole thing (which used 6 pages per floorplan). Then we cut them out and stuck them together. Part of the reason of printing multiple floorplans is so we can work out where the highest points are for when we build the model since we don’t really have any dimensions to tell us exactly where this is. And that’s where we ended that for the day.
Then I went home and took a nap. At about midnight I realised I was stuck on what I was doing for design so I made a to do list for the next day so I can actually get a move on for my project. And then I went to bed at like 1:30-2am because sleep is important 😂
Mid Week Plug
Enjoying this weeks ArchiWeek? Interested in sharing your own week?
Thursday
Thursdays are my long days.
I had urban design in the morning. This is group work, and my group has two year 3s and three year 2s. We are designing a coastal pathway for New Brighton in Christchurch. Each group has a section of the coast and at the end each part has to line up and be connected.
Note from Aliya @archistudentnotes: I have done a similar project where each student was given a section of a block to design - thinking back there definitely could have been more integration and awareness of the neighboring design but it was a good project all the same!
During this class, the tutors gave each group a user (e.g. elderly people, people in wheelchairs, youth, people who exercise a lot… you get the jist). My group got people who exercise a lot. We had to figure out the perfect boardwalk for them and then present it to the class. However, the year 3s in my group kind of took over and didn’t end up doing the task, just decided to get on with designing their own pathway because they didn’t think the task was useful.
Also with especially one of the year 3s, they kept ignoring me and one of the other year 2s in my group, every time we tried to give ideas or help or anything, we kinda just got pushed aside, either ignoring us completely or putting down our ideas.
We have kind of given up because clearly they aren’t listening to us and they don’t seem to really care about the subject either (one of them made it pretty clear they didn’t really care about getting a good grade, they only want to work on their design. Then they kept playing chess on their computer during class, not listening to the tutors talking…)
And you know how we were meant to present the task to the class… well the tutor forgot about our group, and none of my group put their hand up saying we still had to go (I would’ve but I knew we didn’t have the stuff we were supposed to so I didn’t wanna go up there and say we didn’t do the task) So yeah, not too sure what to do here because if I talk to the tutors they will either tell me to just figure it out because it’s group work, and we are adults and should be able to work it out ourselves, or they will talk to the year 3s and then they will know I said something and then probably make it worse to work together.
I will continue to help where I can because it’s still group work and I need to contribute, but I’m not really going to help with the ideas and stuff because they clearly don’t want my input for that.
So anyway, after a much needed lunch break after what felt like the longest 3 hour class… I had my design class again. (Same tutors as Urban, honestly really great tutors overall.) I managed to get a bunch done and I started going down my to-do list that I wrote Wednesday night, which allowed me to get a bit further ahead with what I need to do.
I decided part of this was making an InDesign file to allow me to start getting my presentation ready and putting some of my work on there when I can so I can figure out what I still need to do. So far I don’t really have what I need to put on there yet, but at least the file is made and I can start working towards this.
Then I just had a quick question for one of my tutors about part of my floorplan, which got resolved before they even came over to me 😂 so I just talked to him anyway. He suggested a couple changes but really there wasn’t much he wanted me to change, so I could just keep going and doing what I was doing. (I’m planning on just asking for some feedback on Monday from one of my other tutors because I just want to know I’m going in the right direction but I don’t necessarily have any specific questions at the moment.)
Then it was about 4pm so I went home and then went out for dinner with my family and then relaxed the rest of the night because my hip pain had gotten worse from sitting in a chair all day.
Friday
Fridays are my day off, but I had a bit of my tech project to do since we had to hand in the report part of our assignment, (I was going to do this last night but I was way too exhausted to be able to do it and I knew I had plenty of time today to do it. I did apologise to my group because I had promised to do it the night before but luckily they were really understanding, plus I was still doing it and wasn’t leaving it to them because I’m not that kind of person, plus they are my friends and they know that if I say I’ll do it, I will) so I did a couple details for the space frame of the structure and explained it a little bit and put it on our report and we were able to hand it in a day before it was actually due.
Then I spent the rest of the day not really doing much because it’s my only day off each week and I need a break (even though I have taken a lot of breaks this week…) and sitting at my desk was hurting my hip more and medication wasn’t helping it go away.
NOTE FROM THE WRITER
I swear I’m not usually this exhausted, it’s just the end of the year and the pain is really frustrating and won’t go away with medication (even stronger stuff which I got from the doctor), I am trying my hardest 😅 and even though I may not be doing much work, I am constantly thinking about the work and what I need to do and coming up with ideas so I’m not really relaxing properly anyway… which is probably partly why I’m so exhausted…
And that’s the week!
Thank you so much to our anonymous writer from Christchurch New Zealand for this weeks submission! An incredibly busy week filled with loads of work and the annoyances but also the benefits of group work!
Any tips or advice for our writer, please leave them in the comment section below!
If you’re interested in sharing your own ArchiWeek, your own reflection - click here!
