As students of architecture, we usually speak of practice in the professional sense. Rarely do we use the word in its more common usage, which denotes repetition, process, and something unfinished. In a profession that so often demands perfection, it is easily forgotten that we are all trying – and often struggling – to get it right. We are all practicing.
This issue’s focus is on what it is like to be a human at a school and in a field in which stoicism is prized. This topic seems particularly poignant at the start of the school year as incoming students search for guidance and those returning have had the summer to reflect. We ask: How do we get by? When did a lesson truly click? What have we realized now, in retrospect? When did we feel unstoppable? What humorous situations have we found ourselves in in the name of architecture? We want to illuminate the challenges and triumphs of student life at every stage, as a reminder that we’re all in this absurd yet fulfilling pursuit together.