To all family and friends who don't understand my lifestyle

When you’re an architect …

· you spend hours looking at & buying arch books but never have the time to actually read them
· you can’t afford your own taste
· CAD is your co-pilot
· your closet is mostly full of black clothing
· there are no people in your travel photos
· you don’t think twice about taking notes on your lunch napkin
· instead of scissors, you use an x-acto knife to cut everything
· you turn impossibilities into possibilities
· folks want free design advice during dinner parties
· you’ve paid too much for your education, but don’t get paid enough in your job
· CD’s don’t mean money or music
· obsessive compulsive disorder is not a disorder at all… it’s your way of life
· you will go into an off-limit area to look at a construction detail
· you will die an architect, there is no retirement
· you go to the theater and look at the ceiling
· you can buy glossy coffee table books and claim them as a work-related tax expense
· you can live without human contact, sunlight, water or real food for days … but if you can’t plot (print), that’s bad
· paying $200 for a paper lamp seems perfectly normal
· if someone asks “can you model that?” is not because you are attractive
· your vacations always become research.
· you stare more at the buildings than the people gathered around them
· you draw, write, sketch and plan on a Moleskine · you like to complain about other’s work
· you hate the font ‘times new roman’
· you see the sun rise… and set… and rise…
· the statement “It’s only 1 A.M.” seems perfectly reasonable
· you visit an art museum and take pictures of the building
· everybody at parties will tell you “I thought about being an architect but I couldn’t do the math”
· when you go to a restaurant, you look at the walls, roof, and structure before you check the menu
· you slice your finger and the first thing you think is “don’t bleed on the model”
· you know CAD, REVIT, Sketch up, 3dmax, Corel, Illustrator, and Photoshop … but struggle with Microsoft Excel
· "your preferred evening entertainment is a lecture"
· Everyone assumes you design houses for a living, as if commercial buildings just magically get designed by non-architects.
· You are pretty much forced to just talk about the weather with your non-architect friends.
· you will be kick-ass and admired as much as you are unappreciated and misunderstood
And by the way I am not an architect since still working towards state license.