vobiblog

“It’s a box!” the grumpy tutor exclaimed. Ned felt dejected as it was not the first time this had happened since he had decided it would be a good idea to study architecture. Ned constantly thought to himself, “if only i didn’t leave planning”.

As it turns out, there is very little to stop me from going back to Urban and Regional Planning. After talking to an old lecturer last week, I found out just how easy it is for me to change back again. When I first floated the idea of chucking in the towel with architecture and going back to planning, I thought that everyone would be saying “Oh Ned, why can’t you just make up your mind’. As it turns out, no one is really surprised as I never convinced them of the merits of studding architecture in the first place.
Other peoples support is great, but the only person I need to convince is myself. Hence, I have come up with a list of compelling reasons for me to go back to planning:

• While I like the design process and methodology in theory, in practice, it is replacing PHP or Perl with concrete and steel
• For whatever reason I am better at expressing my thoughts in written form, rather than visually
• Architecture is a very narrow field. You pretty much have to live and breath buildings, which I don’t
• A cardboard box, in my view, has a kind of aesthetic that is greater than those of most of the “cutting edge” architecture
• I have broad interests. Politics, the environment, social issues, economics. Very few fields could allow me to cover such breadth, planning just happens to be one of them.
• To a certain extent, I already live and breath planning. I spend much of my spare time keeping up today with the issues (sad I know). Why not get paid for it?

So there you go, I have actually articulated what I want to do with my life. Now it is just a waiting game for QUT to process my admission into a Bachelor of Urban Development. Could they have picked a name for a degree with more negative connotations? Thankfully there isn’t much in a name.