Do Architecture Students pull all-nighters? If so, why? and how often? Do they have to or do they choose to? We've got answers to all your questions, and by the end of this article, you'll have a much better understanding of this Architecture Student Stereotype and what you can do about it.
In This Article:
01 External Factors
02 Internal Factors
03 How to Avoid All-Nighters
Architecture Student All-Nighters | External Factors
1. Workload (Design Studio)
Architecture Students wouldn't pull all-nighters for school if there wasn't a lot to do. Like most students, Architecture Students take 15 credit hours per semester to graduate on time. The problem is one class called "Design Studio" or just "Studio" for short. An Architecture Student gets 6 credit hours for this course, but it demands the work of 9 or sometimes even 12 credit hours. So put simply, Architecture Students take 15 credit hours on paper, but are putting in the hours of 18 or 21 credit hours. That's a f***ing lot.
Universities strongly discourage taking more than 15-18 credit hours because your education turns into a checklist of papers due and weekly exams, and taking in information at this rate leads to low retention of information. You're getting a degree, but what will you actually remember and be able to use when it's finished? Nevertheless, to keep on pace with the 15 credit hours on paper, Architecture Students have to work like that to keep up.
The workload of an Architecture Student is an unpaid full-time job with mandatory overtime. As a matter of fact, you're paying your University to do this to you. It's possible to get the work done without All-nighters if school is all you have going on and you have level 1000 self-discipline, but these kinds of people go to school for computer science, not Architecture. With this kind of workload, it's easy to understand why Architecture Students who try to maintain healthy relationships and have to work to pay rent don't have time for sleep.
2. Pushy Instructors
This external factor is not a guarantee, but it is the worst for an Architecture Student's sleep schedule if they have this problem. If you think Architecture Students are crazy, wait 'til you meet their professor. Many professors think that you have to push Students to their absolute limits to get the most growth out of them. In moderation, this strategy is effective, but Architects don't do anything in moderation if they don't have to.
A pushy instructor will keep demanding more from an Architecture Student, no matter how much the Student gives. So, once a student has given all their awake hours to their work, they have to start giving their sleeping hours. The problem is the professor isn't a life coach the student signed up for, they are the person that gives the student the grade. A lot of Students don't feel they have the right to tell an instructor they're asking for too much. Instead, the students just go on feeling like they're never doing good enough and then the semester ends. Hopefully, they got a good grade.
3. Expectations
It's been said that people rise to the expectation you set for them, but that can only happen if the expectations are realistic. Unrealistic expectations are the ticket to burnout for ambitious young students who want to succeed. From an external perspective, these expectations typically come from family and school staff. If your expectations for a student are straight-A perfection and nothing else will please you, the student won't feel like they have the option to choose some much-needed rest over staying up and studying.
4. The Arbitrary Nature of the Work
Architecture gets built when the client is done spending money, not when the design is finished. Architecture is never done. It can always be designed, and redesigned, over and over again. There's no real right answer and you're never really finished. As previously mentioned, in the real world, budget limits force designers to stop exploring options and move on to construction.
There's no "budget" like this for Architecture Students. You never really know when the design is finished and it can always be better. So, students who care about quality work often don't know when to quit. They'll keep working and clicking away at their design until it's 1am and they're still not satisfied. The nature of the work is a reason for all-nighters that's often overlooked.
5. You Can't "Fake It"
You can bullshit your way through an essay. You can cliff notes an assigned reading and get lucky on a multiple-choice quiz. You can smooth-talk your way through a presentation you put together the night before. But you can't fake the craftsmanship of a handmade scale model of a building. You can't substitute a carefully laid-out design presentation board for one that was done last night. You can't bullshit your way through Architecture, you've really got to do it. This is another contributing factor to all-nighters for Architecture Students, there's no way around it, you've got to go through it.
6. Competition
Design education is naturally competitive. This ties into the "Arbitrary Nature of the Work" external factor. When there aren't any objective criteria to compare your performance against, the next thing in line is to measure your success against the work of others. Architecture Students are often ambitious in character, so they know that if you want to beat someone else, you have to outwork them, even if it means losing sleep to make it happen. This is yet another reason Architecture Students trade sleep for an all-nighter because of external circumstances.
7. 24 Hour Access
Many Architecture Schools give their Architecture Students 24-hour access to their studio design space. The intention is to offer students flexible hours that can work with anyone's schedule. If a student needs to come into the studio after they finish their night shift at work, they can do so. It's a good thing to offer students in theory, but it opens up the option of pulling an all-nighter in the studio.
Instead, some schools close their Architecture Buildings at midnight or 1 a.m. every night. Knowing this, students can't plan their school work around the possibility that they can pull an all-nighter tonight, they know the studio closes at 1 a.m. and they'll have to go home. A policy like this encourages students to go home and get at least a few hours of sleep before the next day.
Put simply, 24-hour access leaves the option to pull an all-nighter on the table, which inevitably is going to be an option some students take.
Architecture Student All-Nighters | Internal Factors
1. Perfectionism
Perfectionism is a common character trait among Architecture Students, especially ones that pull all-nighters. Quality of work is high, but usually at the cost of other important things in life (like sleep). This kind of Architecture Student experiences extra difficulty with the idea that their project is "finished".
This is an internal factor that leads to all-nighters. It's an idea that erodes the feeling of being content with what you've accomplished. There's no such thing as looking at what you've gotten done by midnight and saying "it's good enough". If it's not everything they dreamed it would be, they will keep working until the sun comes up or they fall down.
2. Time Management
The word is almost a running joke for Architecture Students. Time management? What is that? They laugh and then start to fall asleep standing up, catch themself mid-fall and go get another cup of coffee.
Most Architecture Students are artistically minded individuals, meaning definitive things life timelines aren't definitive to them. They tend to live in their own world, floating through life not exactly sure how they're doing it. When they hit college and suddenly have hard deadlines on their artistic abilities, it's a bit of a shock. They haven't had to practice almost any time management skills before, and suddenly they need a time management skill level of 1000.
It's easier and faster to give up sleep than it is to learn how to set boundaries with your time, so giving up sleep is usually the first thing Students do. It's only after years of working their ass off while sleep-deprived that Students learn how to say no when they have too much on their plate and accept that there's not enough time to do everything. Until that day comes, all-nighters are the go-to solution when there's too much to do.
3. Hard Work Extremism
Some Architecture Students hold on tightly to this idea that if they're not working themself to death, they're not working hard enough. This is the mindset of a student who understands the value of hard work, but hasn't become familiar with the concept of working smarter.
Nevertheless, this extreme idea of hard work can make students actually feel guilty for going to sleep when they "haven't succeeded yet". Eventually, students learn that the last 5 or 6 hours of an all-nighter are very low productivity and you're better off getting a few hours of sleep and getting back to it when you're better rested.
4. Lack of Experience
In the field, time is money. You only need to work in the field for a couple of months to understand how this works. Your employer charges the client for the time you spend on the project, and most clients don't want to spend anything they don't have to. Whether you like it or not, if the client stops spending, you stop designing.
The experience of working in the field quickly develops an understanding that you have to work within limits. These limits (time and money) help keep things moving and help make it clear when you're "finished". It may not be the best it could be, but it's as good as it's going to get because the client is running out of money. Without money limits, Architecture Students don't have to clock out at 5 p.m. and go home. They can work as long as they see fit, and too often that means pulling an all-nighter.
5. Feeling Like They Can't Say No
Architecture Students usually don't think they have a say in how their studio professor is running their class. Whatever the professor asks for, the student will try to do. The problem with this is sometimes professors don't understand how much time it takes Students to do what they've asked. So, if the students don't think they are allowed to push back on the assignment expectations, they all end up working late hours and getting no sleep.
6. Attaching Self-Worth to Performance
This extends beyond just Architecture Students. Many people who attach their self-worth to their performance have unhealthy work habits, including trading sleep to get more work done. This mentality leads people to believe that if they're not "successful", they're not valuable. They hold tightly to the idea that they are only worthy of love if they earn it. This is typically the result of childhood emotional trauma from parents that had very high expectations. If you believe you can only be loved when you're successful, it's understandable why someone would trade anything to be successful, including their sleep.
7. Inefficient Process
Architecture Students who haven't learned how to work efficiently take longer to do the same task than those who have learned how to work efficiently. This means that given the same workload, a student who does everything the slow way will need more time to get the job done and is therefore more likely to need to pull an all-nighter. Take a look at our article on top tips and tools to help you save time as an Architecture student by clicking here.
Architecture Student All-Nighters | How to Avoid Them
If you want to avoid All-Nighters as an Architecture Student, here's a few tips to help:
1. Accept that you don't have time to do everything in a week. There are 168 hours in a week. 7 hours of sleep per night leaves you with 119. Take out a part-time job, hygiene, eating, commute between places, misc. life errands, you've got about 60 hours a week left if you're a machine, but you're not. Take time out for occasional procrastination, Youtube rabbit holes, etc. Then there are relationships; your spouse or dating partner, family, and friends. Try fitting 60 hours a week of class time and homework into that schedule, it's not really possible. There's just not enough time for everything.
2. Think of your time like it's money. You have a limited amount, and if you spend it all, you're going to have to borrow some to get more. In the case of time, you have a limited amount of awake hours to get work done. If you spend all your awake hours with friends instead of doing work, you'll have to borrow from your sleep hours to get work done.
3. Prioritize What's Important. This goes for everything in life, but also within your own project. It's not worth spending a whole day trying to model an interior door handle if you don't even know where the windows will be in your project. Focus on the most important next step, and then if there's time leftover, then you can work on smaller details.
4. Learn How To Say No. Pulling an all-nighter fundamentally means you don't have enough awake hours to do everything you've said yes to. If your instructor is giving you more work than you can handle, tell them no in the professional way: have a conversation with them. Ask what the most important tasks they've assigned to you are so can cut out busy work and spend time on what matters. Say no to friends when you have a lot of work to get done. Reschedule for another time and explain to them what the workload is like. Say no to yourself. You don't need to watch videos about the evolution of pasta noodles when you know you have a lot of work to do. Friends and family are likely to be more understanding of you telling them no if they see you making sacrifices too.
5. Do More in Less Time With More Efficient Tools. If you want to save time and get more sleep, you're going to have to work smarter. Do you use glue for models that are supposed to be quick? Do you have a 3D printer making your model while you put together your boards? Do you have a library of 3D furniture, cars, people, plants and to drop into your model, or do you have to search for those models every time? If you want tips and tools that will help you save time, check out our article on that here.
6. Face Your Demons. Do you attach your self-worth to your work? Do you feel immense pressure from family to succeed? Are your unhealthy work habits fueled by the idea that you have to earn love? Are you emotional broken and using work as a distraction and an escape from your thoughts? What you truly believe ultimately becomes what you do. If you have deeper issues leading you to pull all-nighters, someone telling you to manage your time better isn't going to change anything. Get help, most colleges have a professional you can talk to about anything mental health related, usually free of charge to you.
Architecture Student All-Nighters | Closing Remarks
There are countless studies on the negative health effects of poor sleep habits, and pulling all-nighters is a horrible sleep habit. But, you're not alone. College students everywhere are doing it. Hopefully you can use the tips in this article to reduce the amount of times it happens, and if you find it helpful, share this article with someone else that you think could benefit from it. Good luck!
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