In college, staying up all night chugging coffee or an energy drink to get your work done was seen as a badge of honor. I’m not in college anymore, and that lifestyle that I once entertained is far past me. In medicine, that sort of grind you also kind of had to do in residency training; however, you really didn’t have a choice. You just had to do it. That was basically the schedule that’s given to you. Yet, we still live in a society, especially in America I feel, where the grind is glorified and regarded as a badge of honor.
Yet, there is a negative side to the grind. For one, it’s just not good for your mental or physical health to work that long. Most human beings cannot focus (at least without a substance) for more than a 5-hour workday, let alone 8 to 12 hours a day, 5 days a week. It’s not an efficient way to approach work. I feel that most of the time, people who grind are simply either procrastinating or just not really doing what they can to get the job done in a timely manner.
I am slightly worried about grind culture in architecture school. After all, I will be attending it with individuals mostly in their twenties who can still afford to and have the capacity to grind. In fact, maybe a little intensity in your youth toward a cause you care about is not necessarily a negative thing. As you age, however, all that work will begin to catch up to you, and you start to realize that those late nights may just be compensating for a lack of smarts or planning. I don’t know; all in all, I don’t really think I’m much of a grinder anymore.
The Ivory Tower 
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