Hi. Hallelujah! Last, last Friday saw the end of our most excruciating aki sch experience to date... for the next few months at least. It was the day of models submission with drawings submission already over on Tuesday. Which essentially meant that the past 2 weeks was spent cadding, photoshopping and most recently cutting and gluing. Cept that it was far, far worse than it sounds.
2 weeks before submission is the messy part where everyone is scrambling to confirm their design and where the tutors, part-time tutors and poor external consultants the sch employs - engineers and architects - are desparately and kiasuly hogged by everyone. They're supposed to be there from 2-6pm for each session but i think the poor architects esp only end at 10pm on average. And of cos the queueing up for yr turn is a bitchy, thickskin process. But thank God it was ok in the end and I got pretty good help and all =) so yeah, that's just the beginning of the crazy what we call "production period" in aki sch. a time of emotional and design insecurities as we make the final decisions before we start producing. Of cos, many pple design as they produce heh but its a painful thing i must say. Suddenly, you are the architect, structural engineer, m&e engineer, interior designer, contracter all rolled into 1. And in the week or so to come, you have to be the draughtsman and model-maker too. A huge load on the emotions, the brain, the eyes, the back, the hands, and the sleeptime which bear the huge brunt of this whole process.
Then comes production week(the week before submission) Sleep essentially starts at 6 hours a day in the early part of the week then gets rationed to 4 hours perday from midweek onwards. Then the plan was to sleep a lot on Friday(which erm turned out to be 6 hrs) then work on without sleep for the next 2 nites till I hopefully finish by Monday afternoon, But sadly it was not to be so. Cos i was slow due to the depression of the early week I ended up not sleeping for the last 3 nites till I finished on Tues morn and thank God I could still print with 2 hrs to spare b4 submission. But it was scary, by Monday morn my eyes were all bleary and everything looked doubled. Occassionally I would nod off and had to quickly shake myself up. and the worst part is that in the midst of all that physical pain, it was the time to quickly produce GOOD panels. thank God i'm still ok =) sure was scary then.
Cos I worked in sch then it was a pretty interesting experience... haha i seriously think sociologists would have a field day studying aki sch students and their lives cos its pretty out of the world. we live in a world that has no nite or day (literally if u work in sch cos the digital studio has no windows) since sleep happens when u're too tired and not necessarily when nite comes. it's a crazy world. it works this way in the studio. when u wanna sleep, just tell a friend to wake u up at a certain time, then you crawl into some sleeping bed under the table at this nice corner of the studio and catch some shuteye. but somehow i can nv bring myself to do that. so i just fall asleep sitting at my comp or most of the time force myself to stay awake. the most part is the dirtiness. cos it was Good Friday and the weekend so there were no cleaners and the piles of largely instant noodle cups, macs and other tabao food and drinks just grew outside the studio. everyone looked increasingly terrible, bleary-eyed and all. er but dun worry most of us bathed and brushed everyday =) though i'm sure towards the end many just didnt have the time to do so =) Though the days, the poor friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, parents and all come a-visiting to allevaite some of the pain and to bring much need ffood that wasnt from macs, fong seng or the vending machine =) Thank God for my dear mum who did the honours faithfully for me =)
Then after finishing the panels (Finally! thank God the nightmare ended) its time to print. another source of heartache cos the queue is scary. and it takes 10 mins to print an A1panel of which everyone has 6. So I adopted the staggered policy (since I was slow) as I printed as I finished panels so it wouldnt be a mad rush in the end. I finished the last 3 panels ard noon of submission day and thank God despite the queue they were printed by 1 plus which left me time to finish all the other nitty-gritty stuff like burning CD and compiling the process folio etc etc b4 submission at 4. for some it was real nervewrecking. finished at 2 plus then rush to peace centre to print cos sch was too overloaded then rush back and hopefully be in time. argh why is aki schlife so demanding, so painful, so nervewrecking and body-wracking?
After the submission it was time to collapse into the bed I nv saw for 3 nites, for 14 hours. Then it starts all over again... only now its models (which is funner for me =) Aki students in the upper years generally "employ" what we call elves to help us with models -which come in the form of juniors, friends and family. For me it was my dear parents! I cant believe it oh man I feel so blessed my parents actually overnited with me the day before submission on thurs nite and helped me with my model =) if not i dont think i cd have finish on time. and it was great to work at home after the gross experience in sch. at least stuff is clean and all haha bu the living room was filled with all sorts of paper,cardboards, plastic sheets etc etc.
On Friday after a sleepless Thursday and a 4-hr sleep on Wed, i went to sch with the nearly finished model phew! and found out their wer many pple still struggling to finish! so i guess my theory that u work faster at home than in sch may be real. then it was time to plant the trees and put in the model pple b4 submission. After submission we were supposed to pinup all our drawings and arrange everything models and all for the crit on monday. And for poor pple who have been sleep-deprived for weeks and cutting thru hardboards and plastic for the past days, having to think how to arrange furniture and sweep up the place was a somewhat tiresome task. but we did and thank God it was finally over. the corridors of the studio was like an open rubbish path with all the junk pushed out from the studio into it. but my mond it shd be clean =)
so now, the most painful part of the aki sem has fianlly ended... we now to go for crit on monday and hopefully avoid the external crit the following week (which is random), other than that only 1 exam on the 20th and then most are done with the sem. I have an exam on 3rd may cos I took another mod this sem but still its ok. but b4 all you pple from other faculties say insensitive things like wah so good only 2 exams, only take 3 modules this sem!!! pls read all the other stuff b4 this and u'll be thankful that you're taking that 5 modules with that 5 exams. cos the effort and the pain for my 1 design module alone counts for 3 times more than your 1 in terms of grades and is prob equivalent to what u have to put in for all 5 of yours. so pls dun infuriate us by thinking that we have such privileged lives. yours are far better in terms of levels of humaness. so dun complain. heh sorry for being bitchy, but too many of us have encountered such pple and worse still when some of these are friends that dun understand nor care to that aki life is a whole different ballgame from the normal. Thank God for understanding friends few as they may be but nvtheless precious =)
Anyhow in all this insanity, my greatest Friend was Jesus =) God was the one keeping my sanity, my body, my mind, emotions and patience. If not, I dun think i cd have pulled through. He provided everything I needed to ease me thru the process. from printing on time, providing help and great emo support thru parents, finding that paper to make the paths when i forgot to buy any and finding the roof plan even though i forgot to print it etc etc, they were all great evidences of His love and greatness and faithfulness. =) Thank You Jesus =)
and here's the verse that carried me... if you're in the midst of some trial, take heart trust in God and He'll be your Helper.
"When I am afraid, I will trust in You.
In God, whose word I praise,
In God I trust; I will not be afraid.
What can mortal men do to me?" Psalm 56:3-4
So yeah =) I'm glad i've Him... it's been an emotionally and physically draining sem but thank God its nearly over =) so now when its exams for everyone else, its time for us to rest a lil. Aki sch really changes yr perspective on life... in more ways than one indeed =) So those of you non-aki pple just try to understand us more k? That'll lessen some of the pain =)
2 weeks before submission is the messy part where everyone is scrambling to confirm their design and where the tutors, part-time tutors and poor external consultants the sch employs - engineers and architects - are desparately and kiasuly hogged by everyone. They're supposed to be there from 2-6pm for each session but i think the poor architects esp only end at 10pm on average. And of cos the queueing up for yr turn is a bitchy, thickskin process. But thank God it was ok in the end and I got pretty good help and all =) so yeah, that's just the beginning of the crazy what we call "production period" in aki sch. a time of emotional and design insecurities as we make the final decisions before we start producing. Of cos, many pple design as they produce heh but its a painful thing i must say. Suddenly, you are the architect, structural engineer, m&e engineer, interior designer, contracter all rolled into 1. And in the week or so to come, you have to be the draughtsman and model-maker too. A huge load on the emotions, the brain, the eyes, the back, the hands, and the sleeptime which bear the huge brunt of this whole process.
Then comes production week(the week before submission) Sleep essentially starts at 6 hours a day in the early part of the week then gets rationed to 4 hours perday from midweek onwards. Then the plan was to sleep a lot on Friday(which erm turned out to be 6 hrs) then work on without sleep for the next 2 nites till I hopefully finish by Monday afternoon, But sadly it was not to be so. Cos i was slow due to the depression of the early week I ended up not sleeping for the last 3 nites till I finished on Tues morn and thank God I could still print with 2 hrs to spare b4 submission. But it was scary, by Monday morn my eyes were all bleary and everything looked doubled. Occassionally I would nod off and had to quickly shake myself up. and the worst part is that in the midst of all that physical pain, it was the time to quickly produce GOOD panels. thank God i'm still ok =) sure was scary then.
Cos I worked in sch then it was a pretty interesting experience... haha i seriously think sociologists would have a field day studying aki sch students and their lives cos its pretty out of the world. we live in a world that has no nite or day (literally if u work in sch cos the digital studio has no windows) since sleep happens when u're too tired and not necessarily when nite comes. it's a crazy world. it works this way in the studio. when u wanna sleep, just tell a friend to wake u up at a certain time, then you crawl into some sleeping bed under the table at this nice corner of the studio and catch some shuteye. but somehow i can nv bring myself to do that. so i just fall asleep sitting at my comp or most of the time force myself to stay awake. the most part is the dirtiness. cos it was Good Friday and the weekend so there were no cleaners and the piles of largely instant noodle cups, macs and other tabao food and drinks just grew outside the studio. everyone looked increasingly terrible, bleary-eyed and all. er but dun worry most of us bathed and brushed everyday =) though i'm sure towards the end many just didnt have the time to do so =) Though the days, the poor friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, parents and all come a-visiting to allevaite some of the pain and to bring much need ffood that wasnt from macs, fong seng or the vending machine =) Thank God for my dear mum who did the honours faithfully for me =)
Then after finishing the panels (Finally! thank God the nightmare ended) its time to print. another source of heartache cos the queue is scary. and it takes 10 mins to print an A1panel of which everyone has 6. So I adopted the staggered policy (since I was slow) as I printed as I finished panels so it wouldnt be a mad rush in the end. I finished the last 3 panels ard noon of submission day and thank God despite the queue they were printed by 1 plus which left me time to finish all the other nitty-gritty stuff like burning CD and compiling the process folio etc etc b4 submission at 4. for some it was real nervewrecking. finished at 2 plus then rush to peace centre to print cos sch was too overloaded then rush back and hopefully be in time. argh why is aki schlife so demanding, so painful, so nervewrecking and body-wracking?
After the submission it was time to collapse into the bed I nv saw for 3 nites, for 14 hours. Then it starts all over again... only now its models (which is funner for me =) Aki students in the upper years generally "employ" what we call elves to help us with models -which come in the form of juniors, friends and family. For me it was my dear parents! I cant believe it oh man I feel so blessed my parents actually overnited with me the day before submission on thurs nite and helped me with my model =) if not i dont think i cd have finish on time. and it was great to work at home after the gross experience in sch. at least stuff is clean and all haha bu the living room was filled with all sorts of paper,cardboards, plastic sheets etc etc.
On Friday after a sleepless Thursday and a 4-hr sleep on Wed, i went to sch with the nearly finished model phew! and found out their wer many pple still struggling to finish! so i guess my theory that u work faster at home than in sch may be real. then it was time to plant the trees and put in the model pple b4 submission. After submission we were supposed to pinup all our drawings and arrange everything models and all for the crit on monday. And for poor pple who have been sleep-deprived for weeks and cutting thru hardboards and plastic for the past days, having to think how to arrange furniture and sweep up the place was a somewhat tiresome task. but we did and thank God it was finally over. the corridors of the studio was like an open rubbish path with all the junk pushed out from the studio into it. but my mond it shd be clean =)
so now, the most painful part of the aki sem has fianlly ended... we now to go for crit on monday and hopefully avoid the external crit the following week (which is random), other than that only 1 exam on the 20th and then most are done with the sem. I have an exam on 3rd may cos I took another mod this sem but still its ok. but b4 all you pple from other faculties say insensitive things like wah so good only 2 exams, only take 3 modules this sem!!! pls read all the other stuff b4 this and u'll be thankful that you're taking that 5 modules with that 5 exams. cos the effort and the pain for my 1 design module alone counts for 3 times more than your 1 in terms of grades and is prob equivalent to what u have to put in for all 5 of yours. so pls dun infuriate us by thinking that we have such privileged lives. yours are far better in terms of levels of humaness. so dun complain. heh sorry for being bitchy, but too many of us have encountered such pple and worse still when some of these are friends that dun understand nor care to that aki life is a whole different ballgame from the normal. Thank God for understanding friends few as they may be but nvtheless precious =)
Anyhow in all this insanity, my greatest Friend was Jesus =) God was the one keeping my sanity, my body, my mind, emotions and patience. If not, I dun think i cd have pulled through. He provided everything I needed to ease me thru the process. from printing on time, providing help and great emo support thru parents, finding that paper to make the paths when i forgot to buy any and finding the roof plan even though i forgot to print it etc etc, they were all great evidences of His love and greatness and faithfulness. =) Thank You Jesus =)
and here's the verse that carried me... if you're in the midst of some trial, take heart trust in God and He'll be your Helper.
"When I am afraid, I will trust in You.
In God, whose word I praise,
In God I trust; I will not be afraid.
What can mortal men do to me?" Psalm 56:3-4
So yeah =) I'm glad i've Him... it's been an emotionally and physically draining sem but thank God its nearly over =) so now when its exams for everyone else, its time for us to rest a lil. Aki sch really changes yr perspective on life... in more ways than one indeed =) So those of you non-aki pple just try to understand us more k? That'll lessen some of the pain =)
