Yet another post on college/uni pressure...

Well people, finally as we approach our final few weeks of the finale of this semester, agree with me that many of us are finally all feeling the PRESSURE of COLLEGE/UNI - final projects, final examinations, final submission, final everything -, and like the cycle of every college/uni semester it is at this final point of stage that demands the most out of an individual.


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Courtesy of my ex-uni friend in LUCT, L.M.Jean, a degree architecture science student, who thinks the school of architecture is killing them softly and silently, writes on her experience:


If you are architecture students you've probably experienced:

• the taste of wood glue
• changes in your vocabulary: homework to assignment, ball to sphere, pass up to submit, teacher to lecturers, etc.
• you don't understand how somebody can spend less than RM20 at the supplies store
• you hate people telling you "go to sleep" or "do you still have a lot of work"
• your friends and you don't have the same concept of work "Oh well, do it right before class"
• you've slept more than 20 straight hours on weekends
• you can easily discuss with authority the effects of caffeine on different drinks
• no matter the effort you put in a project, someone will always say: "Why don't you add this?" or " Why don't you change this here?" or "I think that... but... yeah, it's alright..."
• you've heard all your ipod songs/ library of mp3s in a week
• you aren't seen in public without bags under your eyes
• whenever you get invited somewhere, it is followed by: "...or do you have a lot of assignments?"
• you'll dance YMCA with a choreography without a drop of alcohol in your system
• you are able to write down a quick message with rapidographs, lead holders, markers and ink
• you constantly make up excuses for courses that are not design based like why you didn't do your work
• you have more pictures of landscapes and places than of people
• your worst nightmare consists of, but are not limited to, an uncompleted project
• someone once called you "lazy" and you wanted them slaughtered
• you can live without human contact, sunlight, food, etc, but if your potter/printer's ink runs out... disaster!!!
• when anyone lends you a Bic pen, you look down at it
• you care not about sports cars, you favorite car is the one where you can out in your giant-sized model, and your huge computer
• you design wondrous and spectacular things without considering costs
• you have the modern mark: a blister in the palm of your hands for constantly using your mouse
• everyone tells you how they admire your design and work and yet there is no money for it.
• you've gained the ability to sleep in any surface: pencils, keyboards, backpacks, solid-hard ground, your course mates, food, etc.
• you always somehow have the idea that your project will always be recognized and accepted
• when you finally have the time to go out you keep thinking: "Who was the idiot that designed the restaurant's bathroom?" "What is the concept to this food menu?" "Who bloody designed this ___? [table, chair, lighting, fork, etc.]
• you've been at many sunrises, yet you've never seen one
• you need to read all the above in a online community group, or some architecture student's blog to realize how weird your life is
• Eh.....
  

ps: I believe some of the above applies to many of you
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One issue though in a design college, especially in LUCT, every student will, against their own will, go through the same crap - the comments the lecturers give you - it's like the Simon Cowell of design school, and when you do go through a critic session:
(Below are all testimonies of different students)

The lecturer said to me:
"Anyone got any matches... so I can burn this"

I was actually inking my drawings way back in first year and a studio professor came up to my desk, he stood there for about 3 minutes, trying to brush the lines off my page with his hand, and said to me:
"Too late, it's already in ink."

I showed my tutor my design, then he went:
"It looks like a rat."
He then proceeds to pen an outline of a rat around the drawing, complete with whiskers and tail:
"See?"


A lecturer has one look at this girl's model and tell her:
"It's so uninspiring. It's like a male orgasm, 2 seconds and it's over."


"Your architecture is very shallow...
your's like the Paris Hilton of architecture."


"I think something is missing in your project... Oh yeah! Architecture is missing."

ps: critic session - preliminary submission where lecturers or guest lecturers comment on your pin up boards, model, design, artwork, etc.
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Yeah... I know it hurts, but when you think about it, it's actually hilarious, and it really does happen to design students, especially architecture students. The lecturers are capable of shooting you from high above to the lowest of grounds. Some poor dude probably spent days drawing, and the crap he goes through. It's frightening...

It makes me wonder, how would I turn out if I remained an architecture student in LUCT? I still am in a design-based college (architecture is also design, building design). And like any other students, I do at times feel like letting go due to our inability to handle stress well.

SURVIVAL, according to Daryl of http://darylization.blogspot.com :
"The main purpose of college is to obtain education and whatever way the individual wishes to manipulate the education for, is up to the person.

College, is also a place where you meet all sorts of different people as well as learning how to work along well with them. Hence, you will be able to witness all the teamwork assignments flooding in.

However, I do not recall college as a place where, you find a group of people you fall in love with, or at least to make yourself think that way, and to stick with them no matter what the circumstances are. To lie, cheat, gossip, act, pretend, neglect or any other "method" to stay in the group.

Frankly speaking, when one enters the corporate world, it's not up to the person to Choose who she/he wants to work with, the employer does. That also means, even if you end up working with a bunch of seniors who push all the workload to you, you have to pull it through too.

Anyhow, to not divert to far away from the topic, the real key element in "surviving", is your mindset. What do wish to achieve in college?Evaluate critically and carefully on those goals, for whom you're doing it for?

Lose your focus and goals and you will find yourself succumbing to peer pressure, doing things that you find yourself dead shocked to only realize you forgot who you really are."

Well, I'm living by God's grace daily, praying for renewal of spirit and mind, so that I won't lose focus on what is truly important of His purpose in my life. Know, my friends, that there is more to a life than of assignments or even of this frightening concept called "our future".

Life is too short to not live, so why don't you take a step of faith and go wherever God leads? Even if it may seem like something stupid and out of your plans, but give it a try, it may lead someplace better.




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Sam 'Spike' Witwicky: [to Mikaela when she doesn't want to get back in Bumblebee] Fifty years from now, when you're looking back at your life, don't you want to be able to say you had the guts to get in the car?
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