Architecture is a very prestigious profession; there is no second opinion about that. But the struggle every architecture student must go through in their college years is unfathomable. I, being in my final semester of architecture can easily sum down “A day in an architect’s life” in just three words- ‘Work, Work, Work!’ So here is a list of woes in an architecture students’ life. You can sympathize with our community, but trust me there is no empathizing unless you are actually in our shoes.
WHEN THE DAY BEGINS
Well, the day does just do not begin for architecture students because their previous ‘days’ have just not ended for us. They do not pull off a night without sleep, they are over ambitious. They strive for more; they do a week or more without sleep. They compete with each other on who is the last one to drop dead on the floor.
WHEN DO WE SLEEP?
What sleep? A normal 6-hour sleep just isn’t enough to satisfy the architecture student’s soul. They hibernate once their work is done for one semester. They can survive without food and water and sleep for hours. They have even trained their bladders to stop functioning for the time when they are hibernating.
DIET
Caffeine is an architecture student’s staple diet ( Green Tea for all the health conscious ones). Sometimes they try things like pulses and fruits. Who has time to sit and eat ? That is just a waste of an architecture student’s precious time. They could design another skyscraper in the mean time.
SOCIAL LIFE
An architecture student’s social life is non-existent. You can either maintain a social cycle or sleep. It is obvious what is more important in life. Their idea of fun would be learning new 3D software. It’s not like the architecture students are not fun-loving people. But being social is just so demanding when you could easily be a geek. Having an amazing social life is just not their strong suit.
THE IMPORTANCE OF CTRL+S
No one would be estranged to the fact that these two magical keys must never be forgotten while working. Every architecture student has been in this situation at least once when they have got so carried away while working that they forgot to save their work and then suddenly the universe will conspire against them and their system will stop working. All the work that they managed to pull off in the past 4 hours, they can slowly see it going down the drain. Nothing, I repeat, NOTHING, on this earth is more painful than losing data. This is the time when they curse you for switching off the ‘Autosave after every 15 minutes ‘option because they think too high of themselves and believe they will remember to save their work as it is.
FRIENDS BEFORE ARCHITECTURE
Architecture students have friends (a lot of them) before they join architecture. Now they barely have any because their lingo is just not the same anymore. For instance, concept. Generally, it would mean a conception, a notion. But for the architecture students, the concept is the foundation of their design. The word used in any other context is just inappropriate for them. And don’t even get me started on jargons. When they spot an arch, it just cannot be an arch for them. They would have to categorize it as a round arch, segmental arch, triangular arch, lancet arch, equilateral arch etc. This is the phase when they start annoying all their on- architecture friends.
MODEL MAKING
Let’s face it. Anyone in for super glue? Hell yes. An architecture student takes a week to make their project model and two weeks to remove super glue from their fingers and nails.
So if you think your life as an undergraduate student is tough, meet and converse with an architecture student and think again.
Nevertheless, they all seem to enjoy their life and profession. Where else would you find such optimism?.