“Your position has been eliminated.”
“Your services are no longer required.”
“We think you’d be happier elsewhere.”
“Exciting new changes are coming.”
“This is a difficult position to be put in.”
However it’s delivered, it all means the same thing: you’re fired.

Once a punchline on The Apprentice, this term has been pushed past irony by the current administration. DOGE’s mass firing of federal employees has weaponized the catchphrase, while the greater attacks on higher education have intensified. Recently, in fear of the nearly 7% raise in the endowment tax, Yale’s hiring pause has left funding for student positions out at sea.

Unfortunately, the act of unionizing is still disparaged in the field of architecture, and YSoA is no exception. Since the ratification of the first Yale Graduate Workers Contract in 2023, student positions at YSoA have been precarious, with tens of thousands of dollars worth of wages lost in the shuffle of restructuring, reclassification, and outright elimination of jobs.

The industry rides the same tumultuous wave. Commissions are controlled by investment capital and speculative real estate, which drown young professionals in relentless monetary currents. Our own position as workers is deliberately kept unstable, with work contracted out to maintain a degree of separation between employers and employees. It fosters a culture of outperformance where you might inadvertently throw your fellow crewmen overboard. We’re taught to fear the repercussions of organizing en masse—breeding apathy in the grandiosity of the problems, reeling-in capital-worshipping LARPers alike, and preventing the betterment of people’s lives in any systemic way.

This issue is not a doomer eulogy; rather, it’s meant to be a humanizing experience. Whether premature or woefully overdue, we all exist in this drift—our careers one canceled project or budget cut away from erasure. In truth, the field of architecture will always be entrenched in uncertainty. It’s an industry perpetually at risk from the next recession or the next rising tide. While we can’t foresee the next wave, we know there’s more on the way. As Connor suggests, we heed the words of the ever-referenced Deleuze, and we learn to surf.