I studied architecture in college. I was drawn in at a time when the school was doing space station designs, and it was that horrible post-Apollo period in space engineering where the School of Aerospace Engineering was doing balloon payloads.

There was some engineering study, but mostly it was artsy-fartsy, with projects demonstrating things like "pink is heavier than big" (true!)

We got no actual architectural training in drafting, detailing, and the thousands of things a working architect who builds things like shopping centers would have to know. We were expected to pick this up in internships and part-time jobs with architects.

I spent some years plowing through this. The school rapidly separated out those who "spoke the language," including that wonderful, sketchy style of drawing, and I wasn't one of them. I was stubborn--I designed the day care centers, community spaces, and People's Parks when I had to, but if I was given the slightest amount of elbow room in the specs, I did things like stick the "communal home" on the Moon.

When we were told to develop "something" for a piece of acreage on the campus, I laid out a huge science and research complex, with everything the young mad scientist could want, including a nuclear power supply buried deep under the earth. I got an A on that, but it may have been because the teacher was scared of me. Stui

Eventually I bailed with a minor degree in "Environmental Design," and decided if I was going to conquer space, I'd have to forge my own route.

Up at my daughter's campus a few weeks back we browsed a "modern art" exhibit, this one consisting of displays involving pieces of crutches and old mattresses. The descriptive plaques on these things, as they usually are, are the most remarkable examples of pure, distilled bullshit ever produced by humanity outside of Washington D.C.