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They work much of almost every night, while fewer and fewer cars and buses whiz by outside on Broadway, and then they stand on the deserted avenue at 3 or 4 a.m., waiting for a cab to get them home.
They have more to learn each semester than they can recall learning during all their undergraduate years.
Their friends and loved ones keep asking them, Don't you want to just chuck the whole thing?
Such is the life of a modern-day architecture student here at Avery Hall at Columbia University, and everywhere else that architecture programs are offered.
"Late at night, the world outside is dark, and everyone is asleep, and you walk into Avery and it's all light, and everyone is all over the place, and it's just this insane little bubble of nonreality," says Aaron Hockett, who has just finished his first year in Columbia's master's-degree program.
He looks around the table at three fellow students and friends. No one disagrees.
"You get so involved in this snowball of work," pipes in Jason Stoikoff. "There's just this energy. It's the noise. It's the work. God, I hate it, but I love it."
It would be hard to measure, but architecture students, educators, and professionals are convinced that the difficulty and requirements of a professional degree in their field rank with those in medicine and law. Eighty-hour workweeks are common, as are all-nighters.
At graduate architecture programs, at least half of the students commonly arrive with professional undergraduate degrees in architecture or majors in pre-architecture. Many have several years of experience in architecture firms before returning for further academic preparation.
Adding to the pressure: The profession is insisting that the schools are inadequately preparing students for practice. Last year, a report by 15 senior members of the American Institute of Architects reflected: "There often appears to be a disconnect between formal education and the diverse practice settings students experience upon graduation."
They recommended easing the "unnecessarily painful, alienating, and unrewarding" transitional period between graduation and the nine- part national licensure examination they take a few years later.
Architecture educators, often accused of residing in a theory- mortared retreat, spotted coded words -- fighting words, even -- in the panel's recommendation that the institute...