Architecture is a very interesting field. It’s a mix of sincerity, where you are majorly responsible for constructing structures that will one day shape the world and our future but on the other hand, you get to deal with crazy work hours with your fellow architects, irrational clients. The most important thing is to just have fun with all the craziness. Being an architecture student who hasn’t worked in an office, I do have a lot of hilarious experiences in college born out of excessive work pressure and my naivety and aloofness during college hours. One such incident happened when I had recently joined architecture.
It was my first week in college and I was excited about the long dreamt “college life” and proud as my two years of hard work had finally paid off- I was a student of Sir J.J. College of Architecture! New friends and knowledge were in making. On the first day of our graphics class, we were told to procure a drawing board or buy a drafting table for our homes. To make the task simpler I asked my newly made senior friend to suggest a place from where I can get that table. Since I already had a decent wooden table at home she suggested getting a thick glass tabletop and replacing it with the wooden board on my table. The smooth edges can be used for drafting and the glass can then be used for a very famous cheating method-‘glass tracing’. Very happy with my newly acquired knowledge, I got myself a glass top of an appropriate size. Next weekend, the old wooden board was replaced by a glass top. It looked beautiful- My old wooden table with a beautiful glass top instead of the scratched old wooden one.
Now that everything was ready I thought I should try this famous “glass tracing” method. So I kept my lamp below the glass and with great care, scotch-taped an ink sketch I was working on under the glass. Happily, I went and put a new sheet on top of the glass to trace my sketch on it and switched on the lamp. WHAT! I was supposed to be able to see things and trace that sketch again but something was wrong since I couldn’t see anything. After trying to set the sketch for another ten minutes I gave up. Saddened by my failure, I went on doing other things. Fortunately, that day a few of my new friends visited me to work on a case study. Later that evening, I described my situation to one of them and he pointed out the sketch to be traced goes above the glass, not below it. We had a big laugh that day on my naivety.
It’s said time passes faster when you are having fun but I believe time passes fastest when you are studying architecture. Continuous assignments, college workshops, lectures, college dramas, college trips, all passed by within a wink of an eye. There were “educational trips” which were used for everything but Education, “Group assignment nights” that were spent in laughter and movies, and everything else that college people would do, except we had a butt-load of work to crib about too! It was frustrating, exhausting but it never made us love it any less.
Three years had passed and we were about to finish our third year of college. Corona Virus was brewing in China at that time but was oblivious to that. As our work pressure increased, frustration levels of the class neared maximum and we were in dire need of a break. So during one of our lunch breaks before our services studio, a text was received on WhatsApp class group that a class photo will be held after the break. When we later reached the given location, we realized that it was simply a minor prank to organize a Mass Class bunk. Amused by the idea we all stayed. Our professors were informed that we were down for a photograph and will be up soon. One hour passed, another went by and the whole class just stayed out in the sun, passing time, giggling, and having fun. Nobody remembered the professors waiting for us in the studio. After almost two and a half hours our professors came down all angry but to our surprise after seeing the whole class together there, they didn’t scold us but ended up laughing that they had pulled something very similar during their college days too. And this is how we were able to pull a mass class bunk together where everybody was in college but nobody was in class.
Currently, I am in my 4th year of college and in terms of the fact architecture is a difficult profession with all the continuous submissions and deadlines. But, I cannot imagine myself doing anything other than this. The blissful sleep after AD submission, the happiness that u get after seeing your prints are exactly what u wanted them to be, your nanoarchitecture friends envious of all your college trips and your visually cool work never lets you lose interest in the field.
Despite being called architecture instead of an architect by most people, it is a passion worth pursuing.
