Part 1: Identifying Your Interests

PART 1: IDENTIFYING YOUR INTERESTS

Zoom out.

Think about your interests more broadly. Think about what you like to DO. And don’t just think about what you might want to do while you are in school but after you graduate, too.

Grab your sketchbook and jot down your interests! Image courtesy of Baron Fig.

Grab a sheet of paper or pull out your favorite notebook (we’ve been crushing on Baron Fig’s Confidant) and just start writing. Don’t limit yourself. What excites you? What do you love to do without even trying? What interests you and you would like to learn more about? Do you like history? Do you like technology? What about how cities work? What is it about architecture that excites you the most?

Have fun with it! Think about the fantasy job of the future and imagine what that looks like. You can’t accomplish your dream if you don’t know what it is. So start by writing it down.

Connect the dots.

Looking at the list that you just created, are there any patterns starting to form? Can you start to arrange items into categories? Many architecture students have a wide range of interests, from animation to videography. Start thinking about other majors that you might want to consider, too.

Zoom in.

What about you? Now that you have map out your interests, start imagining a day in the life of your future self. What kind of people are you working with? What environment do you work in every day? Do you travel a lot? Do you work mostly alone?

Here are some examples of interests shared by real students and what kinds of programs they entered.
Student A
Interest: Sustainability, Urbanism, Community Design, and Ecological Design
Primary Factors: Location on the West Coast
School: University of Oregon

Student B
Interests: Digital Fabrication, Design-Build, Innovative Building Systems
Primary Factors: the number of robots, the CNC Machines and Research opportunities.
School: University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning

Student C
Interests: Building Information Modeling, Resilience, Adaptive Reuse, and Public Health
Primary Factors: Location, program type, design interests, tuition and alumni base
School: University of Maryland

Stay Tuned… Next Week: Do Your Research!

In the meantime, five things to inspire you:

TED Talks – On “Architecture” and others

Curated Lists on Section | Cut – http://www.sectioncut.com

99% Invisible Podcast with Roman Mars

The Architype Project by AIAS

Working Outside the Box by Archinect

Take the QUIZ on StudyArchitecture.com. It only takes about 10 minutes and it is super fun!