Reality television may compel you to run away shrieking, but as an architect, you owe it to yourself to tune into Architecture School. Conceived by two individuals with experience both in film and architecture (Michael Selditch—a director trained as an architect—together with architecture professor Stan Bertheaud, currently teaching at Woodbury University in Southern California), the series highlights the acute, nail-biting joy and anguish of the architectural studio. For any architect who has been through school years before, the six-part series induces a frisson and a welcome peek at our shared past.

At the same time, Architecture School seems wholly new. We meet eight bright young ones, eagerly signed into professor Byron Mouton’s fourth-year studio in a program called Urbanbuild. We laugh or cheer or shrug for the designs and the personal decisions of Amarit, Adriana, Chris, Kim, Ian, Alex, Carter, and Casey. Should Chris have gone rock climbing with a design review looming? Can Amarit transfer his smarts into a compelling house? And former dean Kroloff’s design critique, fully earned by the student, may make you squirm. We’ve all been there; it’s a rite of passage.