Sacrificing hunger, sleep, family, food, laughter, and other joys of life was something that the saints did in obedience to god now in modern times they are called as architects. In this media saturated world, humor stands out as a form of social communication that has been effective in re-appropriating and questioning our culture. For me my experience in architecture school has been one that has made me come out of my comfort zone be it academically or culturally or socially. Some of these stories that I am going to share have been life changing for me and have shown me a different perspective to living a life to its fullest.
Here are some fun personal experiences I had while studying architecture.
The Ghost Of Comparison
We all known that moment when you are in a function doing your business and some relative calls you an engineer instead of an architect or some aunt calls you “architecture” instead of calling you an “architect” and there you are standing clueless whether you should respond or just go with the flow because the next question which we all know that is going to come is “what is the difference between an architect and a civil engineer then?”, “if engineers build the building then what is it that you do?”, “are you an architect or a designer?” And the comparison never ends. It is like you are in some self-related quiz show where random people come and ask you random questions about your profession only to forget them later. Even after answering their questions we very well know that in the next function you are again going to be called as architecture and not an architect so what I do is I DON’T ATTEND FUNCTIONS. SIMPLE
Everything Is An Elective
The most important thing in every student’s life has been books. It is said that books are irreplaceable. Our entire education system is a sophisticated system of selected books for each grade. Until high school all our teachings came from the books we were supposed to read, but when I joined my architecture school the very first thing that came to my mind was what kind of books I will have to read from now on. It was a surprise for me that we were told to buy all the different stationery one could find in a store but a book. We have no books which still humors me. There is no core curriculum which sounds exciting. The architecture field is multidisciplinary and there is no one way to develop a completely comprehensive education in this field. The entire place is an elective.
Jury Fame
Humor unfolds individual, cultural and specialized forms and differences. With a sense of humor, we detect things in our surroundings that are not fitting to a social norm, it can also be seen as a form of critique and critique as all architecture students know plays a very special role in the field. The juries in architecture school are scary but humorous at the same time. Some humorous dialogues include -did your younger sibling make your model? Did you pick this up from your garbage? Do you even know what is going on in your project? Or when you have spoken everything about your project its past present and future only for the juror to say I DON’T GET IT.
Sustainability And Efficiency
In our schools our community service electives used to always teach us best out of waste techniques. Never had I thought that one day I’ll be collecting waste printed papers from my college library to make a book out of it and write notes or to do lists on the back sides or half used cutters, pencils erasers, tapes, scales, fevi-bonds just to fill up my drawers with in case I ever needed them. Honestly I just keep filling my drawers with all the waste while on the other side I keep buying new stationary only because I can. I remember one time some students started collecting all the waste right from papers to mount boards to acrylic and other model materials and sold it to a kabaddi and threw a party later with the money they got. Another funny incident happened in my first year when most of my classmates along with me had no prior experience in drafting sheets neither did we have tracing tables to trace sheets so we came up with drafting our sheets on the windows of our class, sometimes we have also drafted on the car windows while we were on our way to college.
Survival Of The Toughest
The first year of architecture you are all excited because finally you are starting to see your dream of becoming an architect come true. You enter the college the very first semester you work all night, stay in college for days, start with skipping food have sleepless nights and dreams about ideas that could be used in your project, such dedication and motivation only to end up getting criticized at the end of the semester by jurors who say we don’t understand your project or we think you should have done these 1000 changes that we have suggested instead of what you actually have done and then when we are no more the newcomers in the next semester you are taken over by your seniors to stick blocks and make their site models and other labor work that they make you do. You make a to do list for your final jury only to end up working 48 hours before the jury and cry in the printing shop while your sheets take your entire life to print, it’s like the printers sense your fear and start teasing you by printing at the slowest rate while your examiners are taking attendance in college.
Good Night’s Sleep [Not For Architects]
The lack of sleep makes you feel and act as if you are high. You watch other people and start their day after you and end their day before you. Most of my days have gone with drinking lots and lots of coffee and having caffeine only to end up sleeping all night. One of the most humorous experiences was when I looked under my desk and got scared out of my mind as I saw one of my friends lying in deep sleep with her jacket wrapped around her partly covering her face. Sleeping under a studio desk, more than in your actual bed and not feeling weird about it is what an architecture student can relate to the most. Falling asleep on your table making the perfect angel to sleep with your model materials kept one on top of the other or that perfect chair which comforts you have been one of the best experiences.sleep is a luxury we cannot afford.
Mouse In The House
After every final jury every student is so fed up with all the work and models lying around that they leave everything as is in the class and go back home to finish their years of sleep. One such funny incident that happened with me and my classmates was when we left all our models and sheets as is in the class for our two week semester break, when we arrived back to our class everyone saw the mess on their tables and started cleaning their respective tables, suddenly we heard the squeaking of a mouse at first we thought it was the unoiled chairs but just a few minutes later the mouse emerged it was running everywhere around the class it was a big mouse, it had eaten up most of our models, we were never able to catch the mouse, we still think it has made a hole somewhere in our class and is living it’s life on our the poor models that get thrown in the back.
Cheap Thrills
From the satisfying habits of using the laser cutter for pretty much everything, except actual assignments for all the festival celebrations to making cards and other DIYs. To use cad so much that you start using cad shortcuts in every other program. Being choosier about pens than anyone you know. The pure joy that comes after changing your cutters blade. Each of these unconsciously developed habits I have had throughout my years in architecture are one that humor me the most whenever I realize that I am doing them again. One of the funniest story I remember I when me and one of my friends stole a whole mount board piece and ran like hell from the college to his house, I assure you all that was the last time we did because the amount of anxiousness and random bursts of laughters we had when people spoke about the stolen board could have got us caught.
There are many such experiences that have made most of my stressful days comforting and helped me cope during my terrible days. Be it the juror indirect sarcasm on our projects or the cheap but satisfying thrills I have enjoyed in my architecture school years, they have made my life anything but interesting and have clearly evolved me in every aspect of my life. My entire experience in architecture school has been one that has constantly played with my expectations and hence humored me throughout.
