Remember that twinkle-eyed, excited, and curious kid, ready to devour every ounce of knowledge? Well, look where that got you. Five years of architecture school and you’ve become someone you never fathomed to be. Tasking and tedious that this five-year course of ours is, it also is as exhilarating and happening. The late-night assignments, group projects, trying to make sense of TOS problems, just keep coming back and bring along a smile.
The NATA exam is the first step you take towards becoming an Architecture, sorry Architect. You meet new faces and again see them in the MASA rounds, with bated breaths, waiting to get into the selected colleges. The first day of college, just, is a different feel altogether. You have been warned about the difficulties of the course and yet there you stand trying to meet the challenges head-on. Awkwardness wears off and you become comfortable, the course work begins and it’s all fun. The course keeps getting difficult with time and you keep getting tougher or just stop caring altogether. Sleep schedule becomes non-existent, eating habits turn sporadic, social meetings are close to none, personal life is MIA and you are someone no one recognizes anymore.
Life is a little easier with friends, and that’s absolutely true. You make the best of friends in this course. You’re stuck with the same people for five years and after countless sleepovers, there is nothing that hasn’t been shared amongst you. They support you, help you, tutor you, put you to sleep, feed you at times, and also nag you about your submissions. These are the ones who make you bunk lectures or sit for them, pass chits or devour your lunch between lectures, cover for your poor attendance, help you sleep through lectures and sneak you out of boring seminars. Five years of this course goes by a little smoothly thanks to these demons present around you.
A huge part of the coursework is the Tours. Everyone has a travel bug and architecture sure does nurture it. Tours are the most troublesome and favorite parts of the course. You travel, bond, cry, and become homesick. Working all night long with music and gossip just becomes a thing. You sleep in the buses, while you travel and stay awake in the hotels, meant for resting. Meeting strange people along the way, having scary and near-death experiences just spice the journey. From Fights and tears to homesickness and motion sickness, from photoshoots and vlogs to adventures and treks, from sketching and drafting to dancing and singing without a care, everything is taken care of and dealt with.
You interact with locals there, get to know their story and it is a different kind of euphoria. The kids of the village, come and gather around you as you work, people stop and look at your sketches, they entertain your questions with warmth and patience. You feel wanted and connected and that feeling stays with you always. The breathtaking sites you visit and document also stay with you and a part of you is always left behind. The pictures you bring back are memories you cherish. And at least, for a week after you return, you feel the pangs of nostalgia and miss the gang around.
Tours remind me of the aftermath of them, Juries, and Exhibitions. The scariest part. Having to face complete strangers, who question you back and forth, isn’t something you can ever be prepared for. The best of the speakers and orators tend to get tongue-tied in these highly tense situations. Juries sure scare the wits out of us, but they also in turn teach us to face our fears head on. For six long months, you design a structure putting all your efforts and hard work into it. The day of your jury, the jurors before you pick apart your design, piece by piece, part by part. All you can do is try and defend it and accept the destruction of your dream. You come out shattered to see that everyone suffered the same fate, and you aren’t the only one. Every design has its flaws, after all, that’s what makes it unique.
Architecture is a long journey full of bittersweet memories. A journey filled with tears of joy and despair, panic attacks, midnight wake up calls, random assignment helpers, slogging ourselves, personality makeovers, crazy deadlines, laughter, togetherness, anxiety, and satisfaction. It sure is a tumultuous way but the end is just another beginning. Another beginning to another story to live and enjoy. Architecture taught us quite a lot of values. It taught us companionship, togetherness, perseverance, patience, satisfaction, respect, and most of all faith in oneself.
Architecture school, if you ask me, is like lime juice, equal measures of sweet and salty.
