The Otis College of Art and Design

Date: Jan 17 2004
Major: Architecture (This Major's Salary over time)
The Environmental Design Program is a great idea, on paper.

Otis has yet to figure out how to take this great idea and actually teach it.

For $20+ thousand per year, I want teachers who are accredited, have textbooks, lesson plans - and a freakin clue! The "teachers" want us to believe that there is NOTHING in the entire cannon of archtecture and design lititure that is worth reading. With the exception of one teacher who uses, reuses, and reuses again - xerox copies of magazine articles. Needless to say, burning up $20k for grotty copies does not make for a good investment of time nor money.

There is a lot of verbal masterbation. That is, some windbag tosses off a bunch of overly complicated verbage simply because he is in love with the sound of his own voice. Nevermind communicating ideas to the students; it's more fun for the staff to fling around snotty verbage.

I tried for weeks (WEEKS!) to get the existing Form Z (an architectural computer program) textbook. I was trying to get a specific answer to a problem I was trying to work out. The "instructor" didn't know how to resolve the problem, and refused to even attempt to get the textbook.

At one point I was asked by a teacher, "Why are you here?". Let's see, I'm here to burn up thousands and thousands of dollars to listen to some windbag who obviously does not have a lesson plan, nor textbooks, nor teaching credentials. I'd like to learn all about Environmental Design. The Environmental Design program at Otis is not worth the time nor money.

Most students realize in the Sophmore year that they are screwed and now heavily in debt and committed to a program that doen't transfer, simply shut up and grind through the busywork. I spent most of my time simply 'working the system' rather than trying to learn anything. It became apparent that the instructors have a preconcieved idea as to what the right answer is; anything that deveates is wrong. In order to get a grade that was passing - I simply dished up the crap the instructor wanted to see. On an 18 week project I worked about 4 weeks and spent the rest of the time pretending to be deeply interested in what the instructor thought was important.