In the five years of under graduation with ten semesters and numerous subjects, an Architecture student gives a jury twenty times at the least. Now for the ones who ask, what is a jury? From the eyes of a student, a jury is like a movie directed by the student himself in which the content is the hero and presentation the story. The jurors are the critics who will decide whether it’s a box office hit or a failure. On the day of the jury also being the day of release, the students push hard to put on a good show. Every jury leaves a different mark in a student’s life and has a memory associated with it.
Walking down the memory lane, there is one special experience that is worth narrating. In the second year, students were asked to report fifteen minutes before the jury to get started on time. The internal faculty decided to have a “closed jury” in which the students would not be able to explain their design. Their sheets and models would do the talking for them. Also, this was the first time the students used a digital medium to compose their sheets which meant there was no room for error. The faculty arrived to discover a chaotic situation where some students had turned the corridors into a model-making workshop with papers, cutters, glue spread everywhere, some students still working on their laptops and had to get their prints yet, some at the printer shop collecting their sheets, some writing on prints by hand since they forgot to mention North and other details. The faculty was furious and asked the class representatives to put a message on the class group asking all the students to return in five minutes for the introductory presentation or else they would be failed precisely.
All the students rushed to class holding their breath. The presentation was engaging and kept the external jurors occupied. The students quietly exchanged emails to the printer shop, some were cutting and sticking stuff for their models in the desk drawers and others slipping out alternately in the pretext of going to the washroom to collect their prints during the presentation. After an hour, it was time to set up for the jury. The students arranged their sheets and models on individual desks group-wise. After everything was done, the door was closed and the class representatives were asked to stay inside to take care since the jurors decided to take a break for snacks. The students were delighted as they secretly got an additional fifteen minutes to work. The students strategically started slipping sheets through the doors and giving trees and small pieces of their models to the class representatives to keep on their respective desks. The class representatives became superheroes who were trying to save their people.
On returning, the faculty cross-checked all the work and found one student’s work missing whom they had seen in the morning. They tried calling her phone but it was switched off. The faculty called the students and asked them to search the college premises but to no avail. The jurors were marking the students at a ferocious pace and the faculty was concerned that she might miss the marking. Half an hour passed but no one could spot her. The parents also got troubled as soon as they were informed about their daughter’s situation. It seemed as if she had disappeared. Everyone was panicking when suddenly one of the students suggested to go and check the printer shop. And there she was, working on her laptop without a care for the world. She hadn’t got any notifications since morning as her phone died and didn’t realize the time at all. She rushed to the classroom like P.T.Usha to receive a good dose from the faculty. After everything, she at least made it in time before the marking ended.
After two hours, the faculty came to culminate the jury and discovered an amusing sight. Some students were lying on the staircases like dead bodies, some had their gossip sessions going on, some were watching a movie on their laptops and others were loitering around the corridor. The faculty captured this moment to incorporate it into the annual college magazine. Overall the day ended on a good note.
Such incidents make the journey of five years of Architecture unique from other courses. They remain with one for a lifetime and still make one laugh over the years. Juries teach a student to face a professional and take critics in a positive way for improvement. Every jury is a learning experience and it molds a student to become a good architect.
