It all started with an inquisitive approach towards architecture, which prompted me to enroll in the school of architecture. Getting into architectural college has been quite a nice journey but with a handful of unanticipated “expectations vs reality” checks.
As a freshman, you presume college to substantiate what Bollywood cliches have fed you across your lifespan but all of it turns out to be a fraudulent lie. Unquestionably, you’ll observe the change once you get your first step into the Architecture Department premises. Despite all of this, there’ll be a plethora of new content you’ll come across.
Architecture? What to do as a Freshman?
The wide and never-ending trajectory into architecture is far beyond human expression and thus can’t be inscribed into a pile of pages. Regardless of what you think of having mastered all of it, there’ll, for sure, be something more to add to it. To be able to make the most out of the academic guidance, certain implementations have to be made.
First and the most important in this list would be to keep an open eye around yourself, the more you observe the surrounding, the better you understand the architecture of the region. While in architecture school, you’ll meet a lot of gentlefolk who are close to mastering the art form they’re associated with, and to grasp the knowledge from them, you will require devoted particular attention or as you may say it an attentive ear, making it the next most important thing to pay attention to…
Into The School of Architecture
Right from the first day of college, the tutoring had been different. One of the very first things which I learned in an architectural college was that the course’s nerve is assignments. On a typical day, the first thing I did was to complete the assignment in the studio classroom itself, and then I did the assignment in the hostel room yet, I was all left with assignments. These never-ending demand assignments required a good understanding of time management.
So, I needed to assess my daily time schedule and then formulate a schedule complimenting my requirements. It was complicated, I had to cut down my social interaction, had to schedule anything very precisely, had to give up on certain hobbies, and a handful of more sacrifices to make peace with deadlines.
Time management was the key. I was able to do most of my assignments on time but that was not it. The next mountain cliff awaiting was ‘redo’. I spent hours on the assignment working on a sheet and it hardly took 10 seconds for the juror to call it a redo. Redo basically means your sheets aren’t presentable enough and you need to make the sheets again but with a little more effort.
As a first semester kid, the scariest word to me was ‘redo’. With the purpose of protecting my sheets from that horrible four letters word, I had to inculcate the art of using pencils in the right way. To draft the sheets, one needs a pencil and that pencil ain’t the ‘use me however’ type. The pencil has to be held in a particular manner and had to be rolled during the marking of a line from it.
Sharpening was another big task. Thermacol cutter was bought in the picture to sharp these weapons of mass construction. This comes in a variety of grades, the H grade being light and the B grade being dark, So 3H would be lighter than 2H and 3B would be darker than 2B. Just as you start making peace with it, a new protagonist, microns come into the picture. These need just the attention and perfection as pencils but the thing here is that there is no scope for errors. Once you can erase and pencil mark but you can’t erase a micron mark. So, you need to be very attentive while using it.
A lot of stationary tools is used by the freshman, and to manage the purchase of all essential commodity, a good financial understanding is a must else you’ll end up spending all of the pocket money at once and that too just for stationaries.
The first stationery shopping in college was the most expensive stationery shopping I had ever done in my life. Spending so much money for sheets, scales, etc., was overwhelming but to add to it, carrying all of those stationaries to college and from there to the hostel every day was a task in itself too. Most difficult of all was not to break or lose the items.
All About Architecture
Is Architecture all about T-scale and pencils? No, it has much more to offer than you can ever imagine. Sure, you’ll need to learn and excel in the art of assignments but what the real world will teach you will be as important to your career as boards and jee exam was to you before getting into college.
I absorbed the skill of photography, architectural journalism, graphic designing simultaneously during the college days. You might not take any of those as your mainstream career but those are important to complement your architectural understanding.
Next time when someone asks you, ’What have you learned till now in an Architectural College?’ Make sure you answer something other than what is just written on a pile of papers in your library.
