If your drafting table becomes a bed at 6 AM, and your sheet a pillow, welcome to the architecture students life. If you have bodybuilding training it might come in handy for the sheet burden accompanied with parallel bars, stationery loaded with different markers, pens, a variety of scales, a measuring tape (for when a teacher wants you to measure a smelly washroom!), and a few “soap” and “eraser” models.
Yes, we never use the day-to-day life essentials as normal people do, we sure might make models out of them. Though beware sustainable methods would welcome some intriguing materials like these!!
The entry to any college is to see students having fun in the canteen and sitting around gossiping along with some bookworms having a good time in the library. But if we look at our architectural colleges, is there a scenario of students having a marvelous time? I think not.
Instead, they enjoy amidst the horrors of the jury and always missing the north on the sheets. While missing the deadlines we tend to sip our coffee at the canteen and procrastinate about submissions.
Life at architecture college is literal blood, sweat, and tears. An outsider must be astonished about this statement but they might want to check out the first-year students at our place, who came in expecting a life full of exploration of famous buildings but usually run around with cuts on their fingers by the worst enemy – the blade (generally used in modeling workshops for paper and boards but ends up sending students to medical rooms.)
Sometimes, the knowledge gained in the first year is taken to the fifth year accompanied by the cuts from the blade. The model-making workshops might sound fun to anyone who sees the result of the hard work, but as seen by our professors, the models are meant to be broken as they need a REDO!!
Well, the story of the growing architects and their uncertain life doesn’t end here. It is not an easy job to deal with the sleepless nights and flickering laptop screens-the result of extensive rendering tasks on photoshop. One grows up acquainted with this cycle in their starting years of graduation then comes the reality of jurors and their never satisfied faces by the hard work of students.
The most famous dialogue of theirs being “Where is the NORTH?” as this is our main weakness!! There is a varied spectrum of all kinds of jurors in architecture colleges-those who have a keen eye for even the slightest lapse in a washroom detail in the master plan and some who just never get enough of the “redo”.
Though among these all varieties one might be lucky to find a juror so angelic who approves of a design in one go. Well, the experience of this stage in a budding architect’s life is no less than a rainbow with both warm and cold colors, and this stage teaches us to be stable and handle the hardships and criticism which may come in any form.
If it has come to notice as of now that an architecture student’s life is full of thrills and humorous events in all the design studios almost every day. Architecture college is not a place that teaches you to get demotivated, instead, inspires you to rise out of the harsh realities of life and that is the fun of achievement architecture students in their early ages earn.
One learns rejections, hard work, and criticism almost every day in just a design studio of 10m x 10 m size. A design studio teaches you to love your designs as your offspring but also to improve the mistakes in them – a life lesson that is self-taught after many ages to some. Dealing with deadlines and organizing the workspace is the key to have fun in this prosperous student life. Sooner or later, this becomes a habit when one gets to know about the secrets of being wise.
The fantasized life at any architecture college is not true but the variety of subjects and the in-depth knowledge of almost every tool needed for designing buildings as well as the critical thinking about any subject is what enjoyment here is.
If dealing with those boring subjects like services and structures still looks like horror there is nothing to worry about. Some don’t even get this far but still are great when it comes to their passion, as architecture is not just limited to the studios or drafting it’s way more vivid than that.
Well to get an easy yet thrilling way to enjoy your life at an architecture college there should be a passion for this marvelous job that makes you cross limits to learning more every day. Along with this environment at college, there are supportive and guiding seniors as they too miss the north or lack in the number of sheets presented in a jury.
Well, with the same experience of this hustle-bustle they might come helpful for those dark days when humor in the pain cannot be found.
Amongst all these relatable problems that everyone faces some students do come up with easy to achieve solutions to these and how to deal with college. Some inputs from them in one’s student life will prove to be a gem on how to take inconveniences as just another hurdle to cross and look back to smile at them.
The hectic schedule of the student life does not give time to have a self-care period but the secret to obtaining is to not stress much about the deadlines and take breaks to declutter the mind with a healthy eat and sleep routine. The “all-nighters” being quite famous when it comes to architecture colleges though are not necessarily the only option for the ones who organize their time and assignments accordingly.
Apart from all this, to have a successful career in architecture, one should explore the new and hidden places as much as they can in their student life—so it broadens up one’s mind. Last but not least, architecture student’s life is way too simple and enjoyable only when there is passion. The five years at college would pass on so swiftly and things to remember would just be the laughs on this “humorous pain” offered to students here.
