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The Battalion Page 3 • Wednesday, October 16, 2002
Burnins the midnight oil
Architecture students work long hours and sacrifice sleep at 'Langford HoteV
By Denise Schoppe
THE BATTALION
Many students find themselves living on
campus, but they’re not sleeping in the dorms.
Langford Architecture Building houses archi
tecture students for days while they work on
designs, models and projects.
Amanda Roome, a senior landscape archi
tecture major, said she has been known to stay
at Langford for two straight days.
“We have projects that are spaced out across
atwo week period,” she said. “We have a stage
of research, and then a stage of looking over
all of that research and pulling out the useful
information and putting it in a form we can
present it to our class. Since we have to focus
on the design, even the way we present our
information has to be designed.”
Sleep-deprived students often slip into a state
of delirium and act unusually, Roome said.
“Some people get so tired and delirious that
they just get goofy,” Roome said. “A lot of
interesting stuff happens up there. One time,
we had a guy who rigged something so that
whenever the girl pulled her stool out from
under her desk, a sign shot up in front of her.
They do such crazy stuff.”
Jacob Young, a junior landscape architec
ture major, said many students sing to enter
tain themselves while working.
“I’ve heard people that sing when they prob
ably shouldn’t be singing,” Young said. “I guess
they get tired and they think they are really
good or something, so they sing really loudly.”
Despite the long hours. Young said he would
rather be working on campus all night than sit
ting at home studying for a math test.
“It just kind of depends on what your inter
ests are and what you like to do,” Young said.
He said he enjoys working with other stu
dents and has befriended many other landscape
architecture students throughout the years.
“You see the same people up here day in and
day out, and for most of the night,” Young said.
“With landscape architecture, it’s a five-year
degree, and we have 25 in my graduating class.
You'll see those same 25 people for three years
in studio, so you become really close with them.”
Langford plays a dominant role in the social
lives of most of the students.
“I probably would have been at Fajita Ritas
for dollar margaritas hours ago if I didn’t have
to do my group project,” Roome said. “It is
hard to manage time, because they put us in
group projects. It’s really hard to coordinate
with your partner. Like, I just had to meet with
my group partner and he said he’d be up here
at 4:30 but he didn’t get here until 7:30.”
Students’ sleeping habits also suffer. Roome
said when students pull all-nighters they often
crawl under desks and take naps.
Jennifer Graham, president of the Texas
A&M chapter of The American Institute of
Architecture Students (AIAS) and a senior
environmental design major, said the late hours
at the architecture building are a concern of
the organization at the national level.
Graham said that AIAS put together the
Studio Culture Task Force to observe the num
ber of hours architecture students work.
“A lot of people say that it’s a rite of pas
sage for architecture students to stay up late
and work on projects because it’s always been
this way,” Graham said. “It’s part of the educa
tion to pull an all-nighter, but there’s also an
issue of whether it’s safe.”
In other states, architecture students have
died falling asleep at the wheel when driving
home after working late on projects. To com
bat this problem, many universities close their
architecture buildings at 10 p.m. so students
will not be up all night working on projects.
While this may be an effective way to get stu
dents in bed before midnight, Graham said it is
not necessarily the best solution for A&M’s
architecture program.
“There’s a lot of students who can’t get up
here before 10,” she said. “Many students are
in class all day and then go to a job. By the
time they’re done with everything, they have to
pull an all-nighter and finish a project.”
Graham said some professors collect proj
ects at night so students will not stay up late
working on them.
“Some professors pick up projects at 10 at
night so that their students will go home and
get a good night’s sleep, but that doesn’t stop
students from staying up all night the night
before,” Graham said. “Architecture students
just want to work hard because their projects
aren’t just up for their professors to see, but
also for other professors and other students to
talk about.”
Despite the pressure to impress faculty and
classmates, difficult projects and late nights, ben
efits of being an architecture student do exist.
“I think architecture students get closer to
their classmates than students in other majors
do because we’re up here all the time,”
Graham said. “There’s always music playing
and people having a good time. I think our stu
dents feel lucky that we’re open all night.”
JP BEATO 111 • THE BATTALION
Shawn Ursell, a senior environmental design major, naps on a studio couch in Langford Architecture Building
Tuesday night. Many architecture students take advantage of Langford’s sleep-friendly environment.