First-year Advice
After your first college class, also known as 9AM studio, you realize that being an architecture student is not like being an average University of Tennessee freshman. While your professors are explaining that all you have to do for the next class is arrange a square, a line, and a rectangle in ten different ways, somehow creating something meaningful, your friends are probably still lying in the twin, extra-long bed recovering from the night before. Adults always tell you that college has three categories: sleep, school, and friends and, for some reason, you only can pick two. There are only three possible combinations, and my first year, I decided to try all three.
Friends and Sleep If anyone was wondering, it is never a good sign when your professor asks you why your eyes are glazed over every Friday morning. Also, for future reference, having your line, square, and rectangle a quarter of an inch off is unacceptable. Needless to say, this combination failed quickly.
Sleep and School
Countless boxes of tissues and switching your cell phone bill so you have unlimited minutes to call your mother explaining that you want to switch your major, and combination number two lasts only three weeks.
School and Friends
I think we all know this could never work.
Friends, School, Sleep
They said you cannot do it, that you will wear yourself out, but we all knew that was written in the fine print the day we submitted our portfolios. So yes, you are exhausted, but you are happy. You realize that no one actually goes out on Friday nights until eleven, which gives you a few hours to start some weekend studio work. You can see that an hour for a church group, or forty-five minutes to play in an intramural game, or a five minute dance break to Thrift Shop means staying up one hour, forty-five minutes, five minutes later that night. And, most importantly, Saturdays, never miss a UT game. Tailgates don’t start until noon, and Saturday morning studio is the perfect silence and working in orange checkerboard overalls is completely acceptable.
There will always be phone calls to Mom, there will still be a tissue box here and there, and sometimes you will have to run to the bathroom and rub your hands raw to get rid of the X’s on Friday mornings. But at the end of the semester you will be roasting your study models over a bonfire while laughing about the shenanigans of first year.
submitted by Alli Randall