As a college student, how well one does really depends first of all on what they do for themselves. Other than just what students can do for themselves, they can also get a little help from others. Someone that could help with a student’s success would definitely be some type of staff member or instructor. People, especially busy college students, need somebody there who they can go to and get advice from.
As a design major, and hopefully an architecture student next year, I have countless areas that I can and need to grow in order to become successful. I need to become better at drawing and technical drawing, using different media to create things, and generally just learn to see things from a different perspective. There are several faculty members who have experience in these areas that could really help me. One of these people especially would have to be my Design 102 studio instructor Cindy Gould. She is a great teacher who has helped me significantly already.
Also, though my studio instructor is very helpful to me, she isn’t actually in the field that I’m going into. My advisor, Clayton Johnson, has a Master’s in Architecture and will be a great resource to me while I’m here and hopefully in the architecture program. Just from the couple of times that I have met with him, I have found that Mr. Johnson is extremely helpful and really has my and the rest of his advisees’ best interest in mind. He is extremely knowledgeable not only in architecture itself but also in what classes I need to take and also how manageable different workloads are. I’m not exactly sure of the graduate schools that he or some of the other architecture faculty have their degrees from but I’ve heard that Iowa State University’s Master of Architecture program is pretty good so I would probably just elect to stay here after undergrad.
Students aren’t always able to do it all by themselves and so they need a little help from time to time. A good mentor to me is someone that will be there if I need a little help, some guidance, and/or some advice whether they are critical or not. I feel that I would really need a mentor who can relate to me very well, such as someone who knows how awful the core design program can be on a student but can say, “hang in there, it will be worth it and get better when you are in your program of choice.” Also, it will be kind of a plus to have someone who can possibly put in a good word for me to the judges when it comes time to apply for my program.
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