Text/Flower Tree Blue
Edited by Miriam
It's another year of college entrance examination season, but the score is not the final result, and the test is as challenging as the exam, as well as filling in the volunteer - this year's Zhang Xuefeng's paid college entrance examination volunteer form-filling service was sold out within 3 hours.
In the eyes of many people, it is also a kind of luck to go to a prestigious school with low scores.
In 2023, this student from Guangdong, with a score of 453 in the college entrance examination, will be admitted to Guangzhou University, known as the epic "King of Leaks".
Because of the decline of construction and civil engineering, the admission line for majors has also dropped again and again. 453 points for admission to this major, the ranking has dropped 150,000 places compared with previous years - this score is even lower than the admission line of some junior colleges.
In recent years, there have been similar news. Tongji's civil engineering major has plunged, and more than 40,000 candidates in Henan are expected to be admitted - there is hope for the top 2,000 in previous years; Southeast University's ace major, the Department of Architecture, was once unable to recruit people, while Tsinghua University has directly put civil engineering into the early batch of enrollment since 2020 - so that it will not affect Tsinghua's enrollment score.
In the era when majors are king, can you still learn civil engineering and architecture from prestigious schools? This difficult choice has become a classic joke:
"Teacher, can a child still apply for construction or civil engineering?"
"Filling in the volunteer must not be generalized, it is necessary to look at the problem dialectically, depending on the specific situation, but if the child is biological, don't report it!"
All of this illustrates a problem:
The glorious period of construction and civil engineering has passed.
The building was civil and civil, and it was also wide
The financial media Prism wrote an article "The top students in the financial college entrance examination are beginning to regret it", in which it was mentioned that there was an interview subject who originally liked architectural design, but his parents thought that the financial industry was better "money", so he had no choice but to bow his head.
But the comment area has instead become a big discussion about which is more miserable, learning finance or studying architecture.
But this was not the case in the past.
Once upon a time, architects and civil engineers were high-spirited figures.
In 2007, a TV series called "Struggle" was born. Lu Tao, played by Tong Dawei, is an architect, in addition to falling in love, he also struggles in his career, and finally succeeds in his real estate career.
In 2024, Tong Dawei will once again play the role of an architect. The "Yellow Peony" in "The Story of Rose" is not only a good brother of the people, but also the most ideal marriage partner - working in the architectural design institute within the system, practical and steady, having a successful career, and occasionally receiving some private work to subsidize the family.
In those years, the architect was also the most beloved male protagonist image in film and television. Wu Yanzu in "Single Men and Women", Gao Yixiang in "Meeting Wang Lichuan", and even on the other side of the ocean, from the male protagonist of "Prison Break" to Ted Mosby in "The Romance of Mom and Dad", they are all protagonists, young architects who wear white shirts and indulge in drawings and work overtime.
〓 Ted Mosby, 纽约州最年轻的摩天大楼设计师
Civil engineering is also a high-frequency major in film and television dramas. In "To Our Dying Youth", Zheng Wei studied civil engineering; The movie "I Want Us to Be Together" directly points out the bitterness of the emotional road of civil engineering people - they have to go to the construction site at every turn, and how many years can the long-distance love run last?
In those years, students with high scores, especially male students, rushed to apply for the civil engineering major of the old eighth school of architecture. In the era when the housing price in Shanghai's inner ring began with the word "1", the monthly salary of Tongji civil engineering graduates could exceed 10,000 yuan. Although the hardships and tiredness of civil engineering have always existed, under the premise of high salaries, the hardships of dusty construction sites and perennial absence from home do not seem to be unbearable.
〓 Phoenix WEEKLY wrote Zhang Xuefeng's article a few days ago, and readers commented on the civil engineering major
It's just that the changes of the times can only be described as rapid.
Zhang Qianqian, who enrolled in Tsinghua Architecture in 2008, recalled the ups and downs of her profession and was very embarrassed.
At that time, the Department of Architecture of Tsinghua University won the top prize in various provinces, and the limelight was not inferior to the Guanghua School of Management of Peking University. Moreover, they are not only pursuing success and high salaries, but also the idols of architecture students, all of whom are future masters. She seems to have just caught up in the golden decade of architecture.
That year, the steel bird's nest, which was about to undertake the Olympic Games, completed the final hoisting in the live TV broadcast, and the T3 terminal of the capital airport designed by the "high-tech" master Foster was ready to welcome tourists from all over the world; The Rem Koolhaas-designed CCTV building is nearing its final topping out amid amazement and controversy.
However, the training cycle of the Department of Architecture is too long, with a 5-year bachelor's degree and a 2-year master's degree, and by the time Sissi graduates, she has already encountered a downward cycle.
How did the change happen? Zhang Qianqian was also a little dazed.
In retrospect, the boys in the class were the first to start changing careers, investment banking, finance, and even gaming. Boys seem to have some special tentacles, and they will always be the first to flow to industries with high salaries.
The civil engineering major next door also began to run out one after another, and "running with a bucket" has become a famous Internet meme.
Slowly, questions began to appear on the Zhihu forum, "What do you think about the large-scale change of majors by students of the Department of Architecture at Tsinghua University?" ”
And then this year, Zhihu big V in the field of architecture said that after receiving a question from this year's freshmen, he was admitted to Tsinghua Architecture, and what should he do if he wants to run away before the military training is over? He also added that he asked him if it was really better to go to 211 to study computer science than to study architecture at Tsinghua University......
〓 Image source: Zhihu @邢可
Tsinghua architecture is no longer the profession where many champions gather.
Love and feelings can last a long time
"Brush the night" is the first new term that Zhou Ye learned in college.
Zhou Ye, who grew up in a third-tier town, can be said to be a standard small-town problem-solver. Before entering university, he knew nothing about the various majors and their related characteristics.
"Drawing in the middle of the night hurts, painting at night hurts deeply. Deep wound picture night, hurt picture late night. ”
Accustomed to hearing the legends of seniors staying up late, he first thought that it was nothing more than to come to high school again and brush up on the questions.
But I didn't expect that design is not similar to the study of physics, chemistry and biology.
I stayed up all night to make the drawings of the model drawings, I thought it was okay, but the teacher still gave a low score; The classmates' drawings looked like that, but when they reported, they talked eloquently and won the teacher's appreciation.
The worst thing is that the two-story villa that imitates the European architectural painting was mercilessly ridiculed by the teacher as a "farmhouse".
The only good thing is that the classmates have a good relationship, because they stayed up late together for a long time, and unexpectedly achieved several pairs of ......
An internal paragraph belonging to an architectural student goes like this:
Why did Lin Hui marry Liang Sicheng?
Because he changed the picture for her!
It's so tiring to study architecture. Zhou Ye silently recalled his costs, first, the cycle is long, as a more noble graduate of the old eight colleges and universities of architecture who has passed the professional evaluation, he got a five-year architecture degree, most of his classmates have graduated and worked, and he is still in the strange fifth year of school;
The second is also very expensive, the computer wants to run models and rendering, can only buy good performance, in the past, I felt that coated paper printing was expensive, and now I find that 3D printing burns more money......
〓 Bai Lily acted in a chick movie "The Five Years That Were Stolen", and Zhou Ye always thought that he was acting as an undergraduate career of an architecture student
Although civil engineering is a four-year program, the curriculum is very solid, and each of the engineering cost, water supply and drainage engineering, plumbing, and HVAC is a hard bone.
Choosing the engineering, it was chosen to say Byebye with plenty of sleep.
The industry has also given them a sense of achievement.
Later, in his work, Zhou Ye participated in the design of the renovation of the houses near the Silver Ingot Bridge, and his parents could also go to Shichahai to witness the results of his work when they came to Beijing for tourism.
Clara, who has parents who both work in design institutes, grew up watching her parents sign bridge drawings, and because of this sense of achievement, she went to Canada to study civil engineering. After graduating, she got her wish and wore a tail ring that symbolized her status as an engineer.
In the 90s, the Quebec bridge collapsed, and the cause of the accident was a calculation error by the chief engineer. In order to warn future generations, seven engineering colleges in Canada raised funds to buy the wreckage of the steel girder of the bridge, which was made into a ring and distributed to all engineering graduates, reminding them to remember the bloody lesson.
〓 This ring represents the pride, responsibility, obligation, and humility of the engineer
There is a famous saying among the civil engineers:
Life is like doing civil engineering, you must be able to resist bending, shear, torsion, compression, tensile resistance, earthquake resistance, blow resistance, corrosion resistance, settlement resistance, fatigue resistance; You have to be stiff, deflection, elastic, plastic; You have to be calm, super still, or even super calm.
There are people leaving in every industry, but there are still people who are passionate enough to persist and enter.
The spire of Gaudí's Sagrada Familia is still so beautiful that it makes people cry, Tadao Ando interprets the sacred with light and shadow, and Aranya cannot become a utopia for the middle class of the North Drifter without the auditorium by the sea......
Architecture is the shelter of life, and civil engineering uses the power of engineering to make architecture.
The design institute changed careers and achieved many popular notes
On the red social software, "Design Institute + Career Change" is the traffic password, and the basic article is a hit.
Especially for architecture students, they understand aesthetics and have project experience, and the initial sharing is very good-looking, and there are many successful cases of switching careers to UX and game design, and even insurance and finance.
Slowly, however, the notes took a turn for the worse.
Changing careers is really fragrant, and a high income can also guarantee a weekend, but if you want to know the inside story, you need to know by private message.
Well, that's a lot of traffic pool, so much so that teaching people to change careers can become a business.
Even if they don't change careers, more and more people are leaving the design institute.
As a senior executive of the architectural institute, "Huang Peony" finally chose to go it alone; The male protagonist of North America's "Looking for Mom", his original dream was to make a name on the New York skyline, and in the follow-up plot, he went to NYU to become a professor of architecture.
〓 Some people also suggest that if you don't change careers, go abroad
But the reality is that the New York skyline doesn't seem to be that important anymore. China's period of heavy construction and infrastructure construction is over, and most countries around the world, from the United Kingdom to Japan, from the United States to Russia, have experienced a cycle of real estate crashes and bubbles.
In the wake of the pandemic, hybrid work has emerged, with a large number of office buildings in New York and London sitting idle. According to Bloomberg, the decay of commercial real estate is spreading around the world, like a dark crack running through the global economy. In this context, the demand for the construction and civil engineering industry is naturally getting smaller and smaller.
Once brilliant, now the lonely sinkhole profession is not only construction and civil engineering.
Every time a major becomes an outlet, there is a boost from the times.
In 2001, when China just joined the WTO, English, minor languages, and professional names with "international" became popular, and the score of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies soared to 643 points;
At the beginning of the millennium, when the Internet industry had not yet taken shape, advertising and media majors became the aspirations of liberal arts champions, and now applying for journalism majors has been criticized as a sinkhole;
In the 2010s, when the Internet was in the limelight, computer majors were in full swing;
Last year, ChatGPT was born, and artificial intelligence has become a new object of pursuit.
Every major from the big hit to the return to the calm is also in the cycle of about ten years.
What the future holds, no one can guarantee.
The current education system still follows the framework of the 18th century, and its main logic is that people should play before the age of five, then learn, then work with the knowledge and skills they have learned, and then retire.
However, in the 21st century, society no longer functions like this.
The book "100-year-old life" puts forward a point of view, in the era of people living longer and longer, we must evolve from the past three stages of "study-work-retirement" to a multi-stage life, in order to turn longevity into a gift of life, not a curse.
Exploration and re-learning should become the main theme of life in the second half of life.
Zhang Xuefeng's guidance on filling in the volunteer is effective, but his core standard is only to focus on employment. He himself who studied an unpopular major back then was never framed by this major.
The popularity of the college entrance examination is often behind the real economic outlet in the society, and the major filled in when you go to college may be a different scene four years later, or even when you graduate seven years later.
A person's destiny depends on personal struggle and the course of the times. The future is so unpredictable, and life is always full of accidents.
On this train, the destination is important, but the scenery on the way and the companions on the same train are also an important part of our experience.
If you have been driven away by pragmatism, forever trapped in anxiety, short-sightedness, and the scarcity of the spiritual world, you may miss those beautiful mountain flowers.