Delving into the world of architecture, you go through torrents of different emotions and experiences. The initial months could be overwhelming, especially when you do not know what you are getting into. But people make sure to continually remind you that it is going to be a whole lot of work. And all you can think is, ‘how hard can it be?’.
At the start of your life as an architecture student, you walk into college as lost as can be, not knowing what lies ahead, literally and figuratively. You expect things to be easy going and pleasant. But contrary to the high expectations, you are welcomed with a long scare session about how strenuous those five years are going to be. A long spiel about how sleep is only going to be a dream, as ironic as it may sound, and how you should forget about having a proper schedule for eating and relaxing still haunts the lecture halls. It had to be just you, your work, and everything you need to do that work. And this was merely the beginning.
With this came the seemingly never-ending inventory of all the stationery you had to buy. The names of pieces of equipment, whose existence you were oblivious to and had no clue how to use, all jogged down diligently. If nothing else, you had to be ready for the long spendthrift spell procuring those would be. The next thing you know, your room is filled with an array of drafting tools, none of which you know what to do with. And the room abruptly morphs into a part-time studio. The bed becomes a store for all the sheets and the displaced stationery you do not know where to keep.
The biggest ordeal is carrying all of this material to college and then back home. The first comrade of this travel is the perpetual gaze of people at these intriguing tools. These gazes are sometimes accompanied by curious questions of whats and hows that you are obliged to answer, with a smile. Trouble arises when you are traveling in a bus crammed with people, and every time you move, your parallel bar hits someone on the head or your folio nudges and pushes people around you. This invites the gazes too, but this time, slightly aggressive.
Months into this daily ritual, you already wish for days you finally get to draft on software because sleepless nights of hand-drafting each sheet seem eternally tedious. You become a regular customer of stationery shops because your work drives you there almost every second day, may it be for new sheets or for the pens and pencils which get misplaced every day. Through this process of unmitigated hustle, you subconsciously become more responsible and learn to manage your schedule accordingly, even if it means producing work overnight.
This lifestyle of staying up all night with work piled up around you, the deadline closing by with each passing second, and the brain multitasking all the remaining work simultaneously, becomes a tradition. And somehow, all students master the mystic art of conjuring submissions in the span of a single night. There is always a due assignment round the corner, and the onus is interminable. Semester after semester, submission after submission, the stack of sheets keeps increasing in size along with your knowledge and ability to manage work.
And when the day finally arrives when you can officially work on software, your relief knows no boundaries. It seems like you are finally bidding adieu to the heavy load of all the apparatus you had been dragging around with you. But, relaxation is not as easy to achieve as you think. For now, the time you spent working on the drafting table transmutes into the time you spend working on your laptop. You are relieved from the hand-drafting duty, but software can test your patience just as much, even more so. It is not a walk in the park that you presumed. And as far as the frequent visits to stationery shops go, they never cease to be, although the purpose might be slightly different. This time your hasty visits involve getting gigantic sheets printed and coming home broke.
In fact, as surprising as it may seem, you might even miss drafting your sheets manually. The initial years are a constant yearning to be liberated from the pains of hand-drafting. But, those laborious periods of drafting; most of which culminated in a ‘redo’; during which the sweat of your palms would leave your sheet smudged, only making you question all your efforts further, are the ones that teach you resilience and patience.
This entire journey of student-life is a continuous cycle of learning something new, being amused by novel ideas, looking forward to implementing them, and then being pelted with assignments until you feel exasperated, overworked, and sleepy. And this becomes a pattern that is predictable and unpredictable at the same time. Through the unrelenting struggle, you learn to hustle. And perhaps some moments, or a lot, leave you lamenting, but as implausible as it may seem now, in the end, the only thing you would feel is the pride for making it out unfazed.
