Tod’s Take: how I chose my 50-year career in two seconds

By Tod Lundy

Sometimes the most important decisions in life take only two seconds. In this reflective memoir, Tod Lundy looks back on how a single chance encounter in a university corridor changed the entire course of his life. A story about mentorship, intuition, and the surprising ways we find our purpose in life.

This is the first in a series of personal reflections from Tod, using stories from his own life to uncover ideas with universal relevance. Tod is a retired architect living in Astoria, Oregon, and is the facilitator of Humanist Discussions of Astoria which is held on-line every Monday.

It is said that college is a good place for choosing our life’s work. By careful consideration of our interests and abilities, we can come to a well-considered decision about what career to follow. This choice can then be tested through classes in the chosen discipline. However, choosing our life’s work doesn’t always proceed in such a deliberative manner.

My story starts in high school, when my dad signed me up to take a career interest inventory at the counselling centre of the University of Oregon. There, I was given a long series of questions about all sorts of things. My career interests were determined by correlating my responses to those of various professionals. The results came back that my greatest affinity was for medicine. This was not surprising , as my dad was a doctor. The close second affinity was architecture. This was wholly out of the blue: I barely understood what architects do.  

‘I travelled to Salem to visit the state mental hospital with another psychology student. This was the institution depicted in the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. That experience was so depressing that I began to question my choice of psychology as a career.’

I enrolled in college as a pre-med major. During my second year in college, my classes included psychology and organic chemistry. I enjoyed psychology. But organic chemistry was taught as memorising sequences of reactions rather than as the mechanisms of organic chemistry. I did poorly with memorising and earned a B, a C, and a D in the three successive terms. That D meant death to any hope of gaining admission to a medical school. So I switched my major to psychology, thinking I would become a school counsellor. Over the summer between my sophomore and junior year, I travelled to Salem to visit the state mental hospital with another psychology student. This was the institution depicted in the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. That experience was so depressing that I began to question my choice of psychology as a career.   

While talking to a friend at the start of my junior year, I mentioned that I had a three-credit hour gap in my schedule which I wanted to fill. This friend was an architecture student. He suggested that I take Basic Design. He said that it was related to psychology because it is about thinking. His suggestion sounded good and I signed up for Basic Design. As it turned out there were two sections of Basic Design, and they were taught in adjoining studios, 226A and 226B. I reported to class on the first day in studio 226A. There I met my professor, Lee Hodgden, who was a short muscular man with a bushy beard and a quick, energetic way of presenting design concepts. The class was challenging and engaging and I enjoyed it.

At the end of the first week, Professor Hodgden came to me and said: ‘Your name is not showing up on the roster of enrolled students. Perhaps you are registered in the other section of Basic Design.’ I walked down the hall to explain my situation to Professor Hayden, the teacher of the other section. He refused to admit me, because I had missed the first week. I then went directly to the architecture school office to argue my case for admission. The secretary told me that since both of the Basic Design studios were full, and I was not an architecture major, the professors were not required to admit me. My only option was to wait for the following year and see if there was space for me in a first-term Basic Design studio.

Unbeknown to me, Professor Hodgden had come into the office to collect his mail. As he looked through this, he overheard my conversation with the school secretary. Dejectedly, I turned to leave and was startled to find him standing behind me. He asked: ‘Tod, are you willing to change your major to architecture? If so, you may continue in my studio.’ I had never considered an architecture major. Basic Design was not about architecture. It was not about buildings at all: it was about abstract thinking, composition, and the making of aesthetically pleasing drawings and objects.  

I knew nothing about architecture. At that moment, I recalled the aptitude test that I had taken four years earlier. I paused to consider this proposition for no more than two seconds, and answered ‘Yes’. While it didn’t enter into my quick decision, afterwards it came to me that the professor must think I am talented or he would not have gone out of his way to offer me a place in his crowded studio. He later told me that he knew my major was psychology, and that his wife taught in the Psychology Department. He said he did it so that he could, over dinner, tell his wife ‘I stole one of your students today’.

Looking back, although my choice of professional career was set in a moment, it was a good choice. From that moment, I proceeded to complete the five-year curriculum to earn a bachelor’s degree in architecture from Oregon, and later a master’s degree in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania.  I succeeded in becoming licensed, and had a successful and enjoyable 50-year career as an architect.  So for me, college was a good way to choose my career, though not in the way one would expect.