I'm Going to University to Learn Architecture and It's Making Me So Depressed

Welcome to the first entry in Rock Bottom, VICE Indonesia's on-going column on mental health. Twice a month, Katyusha Methanisa will write about an issue in mental health from a personal angle. Her first entry is about the struggles of suffering from depression while attending architecture school.

Let me tell you a short horror story: I am a second year architecture student. I am also clinically depressed.

Most of the time, I have to choose between the two because I can't be both at the same time. I am actually Hannah Montana slash Miley, except that Hannah means "Studio" and Miley means "Crying." Lately, though, the two worlds have been colliding and I have been finding myself crying in the studio a lot.

I haven't been taking my antidepressants regularly because they put me to sleep while the sheer amount of assignments I'm given daily means I can't ever sleep. Not taking my meds makes it about three times harder to concentrate and finish my assignments, and all I want to do is lie down and wish I would just melt into a puddle on the floor. I often blame myself for being a slow worker. Then I have to compromise my mental health for the sake of finishing school work. I take a look at my classmates and realize that no matter how fast they work, all-nighters are simply inevitable.

I read a study that says that architecture students suffer from sleep deprivation. This was so obvious that I rolled my eyes so hard, I almost fell off my chair. I talked to a few people for this article and the first thing they all mentioned was the frequency of all-nighters they pull every week. Linga, a friend who goes to my university, said all-nighters make her cranky and lose her focus for the rest of the day. Some students often spend the night in the studio working on their display, only to sleep their way through class the next day. Sleep deprivation is inseparable from the average architecture student's life, but we still need enough sleep to produce the amount of work that is constantly being demanded from us. My classmate Risna notes that the mood swings caused by not sleeping enough have affected her relationships with her family and her boyfriend.

For the last 3 semesters, I've been sleeping 2 hours a day when I don't have to pull a full all-nighter. I have recently realized that in normal human terms, this is called a nap. It's not that bad. In fact, it's like kindergarten minus the full night's sleep. Pulling all-nighters used to be a walk in the park back when I first discovered scary podcasts. Sadly they have stopped keeping me awake, so now I rely on parenting podcasts because the ladies who speak on them seem nice and they assure me that there is a reality that's scarier than what I'm facing right now.

I'm sitting down on my bed with my classmate Kinar as I'm typing this, and we're talking about an instance where half of our studio collectively wished that a car would crash into each of us so that we wouldn't have to face the next day. We laughed at the time, but we all knew we were serious to some degree. "I didn't know I had the capacity to be this suicidal," she said, "Being in architecture school made me realize the importance of having good mental health."

As an architecture student, you are constantly putting your work above your physical and mental health. Aside from thinking, you are also making things with your hands (and sometimes feet when you don't have a friend in the vicinity to hold stuff for you). "It's emotionally draining to always have your shit together while everything in your mind is actually a mess," Risna said, "I think the scariest thing is knowing that you are struggling so hard just to go on to work on a poorly paid job." Her older brother, who graduated from the architecture program at our university, recently quit his job because he was underpaid. Her older sister who graduated cum laude from an architecture school in Surabaya is also facing the same problem. "Overall, architecture school has been destructive for me," she laughs.

As many as 25% of architecture students in the U.K. have mental health issues, and this fact makes me both sad and glad that I am not alone. We have breakdowns every other week, but when you're in architecture school, your workload doesn't even allow you to just cry for a bit. It's a choice between not crying and crying while cutting cardboard pieces. Sometimes I find solace in being surrounded by sharp objects all the time. It reminds me of the many ways death wants me. Just kidding, X-ACTO knives are too expensive to graze my worthless being. One of the most painful things about school is the amount of money you spend on materials for models or displays, only to have them receive a grade in 15 minutes and then be thrown away.

My first year was hard because I spent significantly less time with friends from other majors. Whenever I had free time, I would sleep because I was too exhausted to go to parties. The only people I socialize with now are people from the studio. A lot of my friends even admit to feeling guilty when they spend their free time doing what they like because they are so used to doing work all the time. I feel the same. There is a pile of unread books in the corner of my room and school lies between us, keeping me from reaching them. I never go to gigs or watch movies anymore. Instead, I let school take over my life.

I know from experience that talking about your miserable school life to someone who hasn't been in architecture school only makes your blood boil. They compare their own activities to yours and you just end up shaking your head when they eventually say, "Oh, I didn't sleep the other day too" or "I've been there, it'll pass." Working almost literally 24/7, we can never be out-busied. Please come back and say all of those things when you've experienced frustration of getting zero sleep to work on a model only to have your lecturer tell you to redo it from scratch the next day.

Linga told me that a fact that adds into her frustration with school is how the grading system works. More often than not, the standard depends on the best work in class. When someone in class comes in with above-average work, the standard goes up. With this system, you can't help but compare yourself to others, even though deep down you know how toxic this is. In turn, this kills your self-esteem and makes you second-guess your abilities. When your self-esteem is in the gutter, you aren't able to create a great work.

Fortunately, I talked to Maitri, who has graduated from a local university known for its architecture major. She's currently working as a junior architect and she had a lot of insight. She admitted that a lot of her pressure stems from the fact that her dad also works in the same field. People dismiss her good work because she has an architect for a dad.

"I kept beating myself up to always be above my own standards. I was anxious all the time until the last few semesters," she said. "Then I realized that my progress is different from others', and I stopped chasing after grades because creating what you love is more rewarding. I ended up respecting my field and decided to stay with it."

"This field is very under-appreciated and I feel like no one gets it until they dive down into this on their own, but to be honest, school is harder than work. When you're working, you're more at ease and don't always have to be on edge to defend your work in front of others all the time."

Even now that I see a potential light at the end of this tunnel of depression, I remain stuck on the line between love and hate for architecture. Despite the damage it has done to my physical and mental health, architecture school is never boring. You get to learn a little bit of every field. Every day is a challenge, and that simultaneously excites me and makes me want to die. I don't know whether I will eventually love waking up to little pieces of cardboard that managed to find their way into my bed and ultimately on my butt cheeks, but I know that this major is responsible for my love affair with McDonald's 24-hour delivery service, and that's reason enough to continue living.