I often hear amongst the students that “there are not enough hours in a day,” to get all the things done that need to be done. That may be true, but I have been stressing to them lately that it’s how they use those hours in any given day, with efficiently and with purpose, that will allow them to meet their goals. I have been urging the studio to treat the task at hand as a job rather than a school project. I ask them to meet at the shop to begin work at 8 am and I expect to finish the day’s work by 9 pm. This schedule goes against every impulse of an architecture student, but it is a necessity when it comes to Design/Build projects. The scale of this project requires the remainder of work to be done outside, and with the recent time change, it becomes dark by 6 pm making it inefficient to work later than that.
Getting up early to begin work, coordinating breaks and meals, and getting a good nights sleep is what I am teaching the students now. When it comes to the actual work though, they are doing just fine and need little direction anymore. I know that the students have the skills to pull of this stunning project, I just hope they have the discipline it will require to finish it on time. It’s hard to believe we are less than a week from beginning the installation on site and a week from completing this project all together. There is no question we have to squeeze the most out of every hour of every day this week. It’s going to be exhausting, but it’s going to be well worth it.
