Architecture involves designing buildings. It’s a field that combines visual design, functional design, and engineering in unusual ways. People build buildings to live in and work in, to use as hotels and monuments, so buildings all have both form and function. Architects find ways to create designs that are visually interesting, and also ways to create designs that work, structurally and in terms of the use that’s intended. So it takes an unusual mind to be a great architect – combining design aptitude with a precise mechanical bent and artistic skills.

This video explains what it’s really like to be an architect, and how studying architecture is really about much more than just design.

This article from the Independent is a good, first-person summary of what it’s like to study architecture.

Dedication is paramount. There is an undeniably high percentage of drop-outs compared to most other degrees, but that is precisely because it is so hard. If you are doing a degree for the student lifestyle, this is the wrong choice for you. The responsibility that comes with the profession is a serious one. Mistakes made just once have the possibility of affecting people for decades, but most importantly, the opposite is true too.