A journey begins when one has a fixed destination or a starting point. Now journeys can lurk around various fields; it may be spiritual, social, emotional, or physical. Most of us are at a junction at the end of our higher secondary, from where we need to journey forward and all these fundamental life paths. Some of us choose creative fields like art or architecture to tread onto the abyss. While some of us join this field mistaking it for a contractor’s work or with the common man’s idea— ‘building buildings.’ But the ground below our feet completely shakes when we start understanding this course. But then again this doesn’t happen in a day or two, does it?
Catching the essence of this comes with a lot of knowledge and bad juries and sleepless nights, and horrible designs. These become memories through our journey in college and constantly come up in our thoughts. And these memories are what keeps us sane, and give us means to talk to other people and walk their journeys alongside us. These memories are made during our lifetimes, and a lot of these sweet and funny ones often come around in our college years. The college marks the transition period of students. It is also the time when we bag a large number of bittersweet memories at which we laugh on at a later stage of our lives (at least that’s what most adults tell us).
We all have memories from our time in college, be it a freshman or a final year student, everyone can relate to the conditions of the other when we go through college together. Communication skills are emphasized in any architecture college and most of us learn it from these interactions (with fellow students or faculty). The common ground for most of us to connect is the funny instances we face in college.
Well, all of us have met different types of people or been through certain situations in college. We all know a person who works the hardest but messes things up in the end. Then, some people work less and get things done with other people’s help. There are those artists who make beautiful models and also those who make pieces of art on their sheets. Then there are faculties, the pillars of the education infrastructure, some great and some not so much. Some of the classes where it’s hard to keep the senses open and others where we spend time on a completely different strain of thought. And then on a stressed-out day, one would chitchat with their group of friends or bunk classes just to hang out (irritates a lot of teachers).
Most of our memorable moments revolve around the final submissions. The dreaded moment of every semester where our work is evaluated. And that is the most hectic time of the semester, as most of the work gets done at that time. The “all-nighters” that we do together with our classmates, fueled by caffeine and all sorts of aids. And no all-nighter is complete without the mid-work discussions accompanied by snack breaks to relax the mind. These are the nights the entire hostel is up and we get frequent visits from our peers, inquiring about our progress or asking for completed sheets for ‘topo’ (copying). Rita Mae Brown once said – “If it weren’t for the last minute, nothing would get done.”
The next step in the journey is the jury, which is a spectacle to behold. The drill for the day is simple – dress up in ironed clothes, have a proper bath (sometimes after weeks), groom ourselves (to look more civilized), organize our portfolios, and perform the last-minute adjustments. Then there are also compulsory visits to the rooms of our friends, to check on who looks the neatest or the dumbest of the lot. Finally, it’s time for the ultimate showdown, the final jury, one where nervousness gets the better of most of us. Scared and shook we sit for our jury, which goes either of the two ways. But either way, we all end up at the batch party that evening, and let off the steam of the entire semester and look back at the journey. It is the typical loop any student goes through.
But no matter how tough the journey, it teaches us a lot of lessons. We often find ourselves on tougher paths and realize how hard life is, but this is only true when we walk on that road. Tony Robbins once said – “The only impossible journey is the one you never begin.” It’s in the tough times where humor is our best companion and helps to relax our mind in difficult times. And before knowing it, these humor become an integral part of our lives. What we become is an infinite possibility and non-conclusive, the only constant thing is experience gathered on the way.
