O O Ø O O O O
I Have a Turtleneck (and I’m prepared to use it).
On Monday, March 4th the Dalhousie Faculty Association (DFA) began a strike directed against the Dalhousie University Board of Governors, due to the continued failure of their respective negotiating teams to come to terms on a new collective bargaining agreement. In response to the strike action, the Board of Governors has cancelled all the classes in every department across the university, pending the successful resolution of the dispute.
To my surprise, this affects School of Architecture as well. At first I thought this would have little to no impact on my semester, as most of my classes are taught by sessional instructors who hold industry jobs, and only teach one or two classes. Only a few are taught by tenure-track DFA members.
As it happens however, these sessional instructors, as well as all of the teaching assistants, are forbidden by the language of the dispute from conducting any teaching activities either on or off campus. Since the classes are actually cancelled, any interaction they do have with students can’t be used in evaluation to produce a final grade.
In anticipation of this work stoppage, profs have buried us with handouts and new schedules, and advised us not to fall too far behind. Oh, and not to bother the TAs too much.
So teaching has ground to a halt. I’m on my own.
My first reaction was to saddle up my rage, trot on over to the pd.o, and let ’er ride. We’d likely see a stream of open letters on this site packed with venom and vitriol along the lines of:
I pay $3,000 a semester to be a consumer of education at Dal. I quit my successful consulting practice and painfully moved my family 5,000 kilometres to be here. In some ways I’ve put my life on pause to get this degree, and now this pursuit is on hold. I’m not in Halifax to pass my time.
...and so on, and so forth.
Astonishingly, my urge to do this has passed. One of my profs put it best: Students should be serene, and intense. (Sometimes this particular prof, who also happens to be the director of the programme, can be a little optimistic and obscure, but this statement struck a chord.)
I can be both serene and intense. I look at the strike like this: I am here to be taught by anyone, and by any means. Under normal circumstances, that would be a combination of profs, TAs, peers and my own personal discoveries. For the indeterminate future, the first two are unavailable to me, but that’s only a part of the process.
Instructors are non-essential.
I’m carrying on, doing the drawings, researching the buildings, and getting it done as though the schedule hadn’t changed. What I’ve discovered is the instructors are non-essential, because the only thing that matters here is the certified pre-professional degree at the end. As long as the labour dispute ends without the loss of the semester, the result will be the same and I will get to the same place. (If they lose the semester, I get my tuition back, so I know the university won’t allow that to happen. Dalhousie’s M.O. is all about rapid expansion of student enrolment to increase revenues, and deferring maintenance to suppress current account expenses.)
Six months before I came to the School of Architecture, I wondered desperately whether or not I could do this, whether I had the faculties and talent to build. Now six months into my term I know with certainty that I do. This makes the intense and serene parts simple. Like this:
By way of my studies, I get to my thesis. By way of my thesis, I get to my degree. By way of all these things, I will find employment in the field of architecture, which will allow me to pursue professional certification. That’s the goal: the architect’s stamp at the end of seven or eight years.
People want things built, without all the fuss with the scarves.
I’ve fielded questions before on whether or not this is all necessary. If I feel I have abilities, why not hang up my shingle and start building, without the professional degree? It’s done all the time, and quite often with very successful results. My parents’ house was designed by one such soul. Many builders don’t even use architects, since their fees are a drain on their already tight margins. Heck, if you just follow the Canadian building codes, you don’t need anyone to tell you how to do it. This is why the entire profession of architecture is struggling to reinvent itself as a discipline more relevant to typical urban dwellers who simply want something built, without all the fuss with the scarves and nebulous discussions containing the word “vernacular”.
So what am I in it for? This strike has made me look a little closer at my reasons, and I have found that it comes down to one. I want the responsibility of being a design professional. These next years (how many now?) are about expanding my breadth of skill, knowledge and focus, all of which I feel are critical to my aspirations.
If the university, the profs and the TAs feel like helping me along the way, that’s great. Otherwise, there’s no choice but to view them as damage obstructing my path, and simply route around them.
© Evan Spence, and well met. Thank you.
Tuesday, March 12,
2002
PD
DXXXVIII