Choices at any age are difficult. Especially the “Career choice.” If you think you are a creator and have the power of creativity, then Architecture, could be an apt choice.
In conversation with Priyanka B, a budding architect.
How did you make your choice?
Career choices today are made with a thorough study of various options .My case being different, Architecture chose me. I happened to hear about the architectural state entrance exam from a friend and filled it’s form and when the results came out and I found that I had secured a seat with merit in a local architecture college.
Tell us about the course
The five year course is a perfect amalgamation of professionalism and inventiveness. As a student you are taught to enhance your creativity by understanding basic design process and eventually you learn to have a fair knowledge of designing buildings of different sectors like Hospitality, Institutional, Residential and so on.
Students are also equipped to handle the execution part by imparting knowledge of materials and structures. Architecture can also branch out into specialization like Landscape and Urban design to name a few.
Although as a student of architecture you will find yourself having reasonable understanding about graphic designs, Landscaping, Interior designing too. 
How about the career prospects?
In the “real world” the work mechanism has an obvious added dynamic which is money, a harsh truth of life. The give and take of delivering creative work in return of monetary gain needs a fine balance. As an employee of huge real estate and construction companies, an architect’s services are highly valued.
Smaller design firms also have a place for architects but more than often the earning revenue gets stagnant after a specific period but there are opportunities of being a co – consultant if you execute that extra zing in your work output.
As mentioned earlier, I landed into architecture by chance, but it helped in bringing out the lost creativity in me. I see that any creative process has a meditative quality about it and I experience that as an Architect. As Frank Llyod Wright has said, “A great architect is not made by way of a brain nearly so much as he is made by way of a cultivated enriched heart.”
You have to question yourself, understand and then your persona is more than often reflected in your design which becomes your style statement – a unique identity. An architect, is socially responsible towards the society for their designs become habitable places which also weave a social fabric.
How has your life changed as an architect?
Today, as an independent architect, I find myself becoming more conscious of my designed creation as I am aware that it has the capacity to make a user- friendly space at a micro level and at the same time create an environment which keeps people connected socially adding on to the emotional and cultural quotient.
To me there fore, in the words of Earnest Dimnet, “architecture, of all arts, is the one which acts the most slowly but most surely, on the soul.”
Thanks Priyanka for enlightening us 
You can contact Priyanka at:prianka2586@gmail.co