Life of a Transfer Student

By:Daniel Roman     

           

            I guess ever since I was young kid architecture always interested me, but it didn’t really hit me until the later part of my high school career that I realize that it was something I wanted to pursue. Out of high school I applied and was accepted to Southern Illinois University. Due to some financial issues I was not able to enroll right after high school. Instead I went to community college. I attended Harold Washington Community College, they had a transferring program with Southern Illinois University that allowed me to transfer my credits and continue my education at Southern Illinois University (SIU). While attending Harold, it was clear how many people started in the first studio and slowly but surely people dropped architecture as a major. The courses where hard, but the way I look at, when something is your passion, then it isn’t much of a hassle. There was a split moment where it was becoming overwhelming and thought of pursuing a different career path. That thought quickly left my mind once I realized nothing else interested me. Architecture was my first love and I couldn’t turn my back to it.

            I transferred to SIU in the Fall of 2013, I came to SIU with four other former Harold Washington students. Three of them became my roommates. Our idea was I we stuck together we could take the world. We still remember our first day of class. We were late because we could not find the building, we were not to the smoothest of starts, the day was not over yet. During my first studio class a homework  assignment was assigned over D2L, which at that time I had no idea what that was, this only led to me rushing to try to throw something together on my computer quickly. It was supposed to be a quick power point about myself. Only to find out that my laptop was low on battery and I didn’t bring my charger with me.

            Needless to say the first day was overwhelming. Coming from a city college to a full blown four year university, it was a bit much. The only thing that I had to my favor was that I was older than a freshman barely leaving their home nest. I was able to get on my feet and get my work done. My roommates and I where to fit in when it came to skill level with the other kids. My studio consisted of mostly transfer students so it allowed for many students looking to interact and get to know people, it also led to a lot of competition. Everyone came from different backgrounds and went to different schools prior to ending up at SIU.

            By far the class I was most comfortable in was in Pro. Norm’s construction class, my previous professor at Harold Washington was a very technical teacher, with a strong design back ground. So when it came to designing small corner details or lintel details I enjoyed them. Nothing was more soothing than sitting down with some music on and drafting away in  AutoCad. I did wait towers the end before the review sheet was done, when it came to finishing those drawings I was better when I worked under pressure. Granted I did make some small errors, but they were for the mock up. Once that was red marked by my roommates and the professor, I took it and made the corrections. I finished that class with an A at the end of the fall semester.

            Living with other architecture major quickly became a blessing and a curse. A curse mostly because we all knew each other and we knew how to get under each other’s skin. On top of that we lived together and had class together, so we hardly ever had time apart. So it became a hassle that we had to learn how to put up with each other. Needless to say the following year all four didn’t live with each other.