The months of July-August usually bring butterflies to every college student’s stomach. Whether it is a loss of freedom that they lament about or the relief of combating their boredom, excitement for the new semester is a common feeling within all of them as they enter the college building, ready to take on whatever that the course would throw at them.
Fast forward into a couple of weeks, where all of these passionate students get into the full force of the college life – attending all the classes, finishing off their work within mentioned deadlines, hanging out with friends, all fun and games as college seems to be like to every outsider. Personal experiences in an Architecture college have shown me how everything being taught in the lectures and all the tasks performed in the studios are intriguing and give rise to brilliant ideas. It is honestly a great place to be in; one can feel the creativity as they walk down the corridors, a steady murmur of voices talking about technical words and ingenious ideas.
All ideas must come to fruition and Architectural Design is no exception. So when deadlines start coming closer and closer, there are assignments for Structures and History, not to mention the plans that need to be finished for Building Construction, and there is just not enough time, and yet none of them can be ignored. All of these multiple deadlines will soon pile up in a week or two, where all that has been learned or produced during the semester is displayed and graded. The datasheet seems to create more stress, pointing upon it a matter of much concern for all of the students, the Finals week.
Last year when our troubles did not involve an actual pandemic and a virus was just a computer virus, finals week was divided into two parts – internals and externals. Interestingly, it is the internal examination that takes out every ounce of energy from a student. Along with attending classes and keeping up with the topics being taught, this is when deadlines hit you without a warning. Everything is a mess – no sleep, irregular meals, the occasional glass of water between multiple cups of coffee or preferred energy drink, the multiple sheets of obscure hand-sketched pages, and massive A0 size printouts. Between all of this is one support system, the laptop which is a binding factor holding all of the semester’s work together, and the one entity that will be able to aid us with all the final renders needed for the upcoming deadlines.
Of course, with the advent of digital media comes the possibility of a malicious attack from a virus. In our fields where group projects require downloading of mail attachments and solidarity allows multiple people to connect their pen drives in dire needs, a virus attack is not a rare occurrence. It happens to a variety of people all through the semester and it is never a good feeling. Imagine the worst time for it to happen.
The day was not going well already, and it was a Tuesday which made the weekend ergo the possibility of sleep looking too far. A pre-final design review was coming up on Thursday, adding on to the portfolio submission for construction the next day which required all of the cache memory to be utilized by a large variety of apps; the poor system could only take so much. After an extra class that ended later than it should have, during which I almost got locked in the washroom since this class was held after hours and my sleep-deprived eyes needed a wakeup call, the intention was to go and grab a cup of coffee to brace myself for the upcoming sleepless night. What I was not expecting was a downloaded file turning out to be ransom-ware and completely messing up my system at 1:40 AM.
My first reaction was to quickly shut it off, and then I took my time processing what had just happened. It was so abrupt that my roommate looked over and asked me if I was okay. I burst into tears, not because I had not saved anything but because we keep backing up our work as soon as we finish it. Getting a virus attack was a first for me and while it was not that much of a loss (except the repairing time which put me behind my desired schedule) but the idea itself to me was so absurd that it turned us both hysterical. Our third roommate was sleeping after finishing off her work (such people are as panic-inducing as they are inspiring) and we had no intention of waking her up. This was also the time where I received a message declaring an extension, and while it calmed me down significantly, our caffeinated brains were hysterical. I laughed while tears streamed down my face until 4:00 AM and we managed to wake up the third roommate with our chuckles, who woke up confused, concerned, and very amused all at once.
Somehow both of my roommates encountered the virus within the very week. Multiple backups eliminated the loss of any work and we safely presented the required deliverables on time, albeit a little late. But well, that is probably just how things are, we are always late because of something or the other.
I still do not know why I cried.
