My Passion, My Academics
Yellpppp!!!
Every single evening I hear about 5 student scream out their lungs. The rodent colony running up and down through the stairway doesn’t seem to care about getting squashed, not like we do on this campus. My name is Jordan Ebong, I’m a student Architect & creator and this is the beginning of an inspiring series.
Lately, I’ve been looking back at my years on campus, (you’ll do that soon once in your final year) and studying the art & science of the designing of spaces and problem-solving for 3 years (+ or – covid) I’m still not certain I know what I’m doing…..[Yikes]. I mean you are meant to be certain you know what you are going in for the period you “jamb” or get"jammed”, but whether or not you encountered both doesn’t really matter in this part of the campus.
I recently visited the freshmen on campus and it sparked a lot of memories. I remember sitting in those seats designed to give you a sense of studiousness but not particularly designed to inspire hope, The vast 400 seaters filled just up to 130 or thereabout, and the remaining 370 were empty but felt like the ghosts of all those who lived and passed through staring into despair.
Yeaaaa!!!!!(Someone screamed)
Another platoon of rats I guess.
I had the opportunity to address them and speak for a little over 10 minutes, a long enough time to instill the fear of God and the hope that I couldn’t get when taking the paddle to push myself further into the unknown. Attentive they were, dreamy and hopeful yes, but attentive. It was enough to lead me to ponder over the past few days on the Journey so far and how far I have allowed myself to drift from my academics into my passion just to get enough fuel to sustain the academic Journey.
My passion yes… this I’ll talk about in a later post, but let’s dive into my academics a bit.
The art & science of creating functional spaces (Architecture) is quite insightful but complex apart from the fact that everyone thinks we just draw houses (try defining a house…) and carry papers all around, having something to do with buildings and….well that’s all they know. I wouldn’t blame them, I wouldn’t blame myself at all the discipline is simply a study of knowing how to understand people and thinking for them whilst designing a structure.
Let me break it down a little. You want to build a product (a house), you want to be safe, you want to be exciting and feel comfortable, you want to be able to achieve, feel the closure of family yet experience the world. What exactly do you want? (Chuckles…) Well, you want a piece of earth space to create all those feelings for you and suit your desires. Excellent you’ve created a problem you want me to solve. Now my discipline expects me to sit down, go into your mind and understand all these feelings, understand your problems then try and craft an Idea that should solve your problem (Concept).
Follow me closely, ‘should' solve your problem, whatever the concept might be is only a basis to attempt to provide you with a structure where you get to feel comfortable. Then I (Student Architect) still have the last phase where I now have to try and squeeze my Ideas into the ‘standards’ and provide that little solution you feel I should be able to figure out in days.
Enough technical talk.
This of course is a beautiful process you might be thinking (depending on the level you currently are in) but from a 3 years point of view……It is what it is (laughs)
I do have a lot to talk about, but let’s take the ride easy. My passion isn’t the totality of what I’m studying but it definitely is in line with what I’ve faced so far. Generally, Architecture is a beautiful course to study. It’s one of the rare opportunities you’ll get to design & build something that means something for years to come, The process is not quite a walk in the park, the outcome is a splendor.
In my next blog post, I’ll talk about my passion and how my academics infuse into it and throw more light on the discipline, Do watch out for more on this series. And do watch out for my Podcast series in the next post where I walk you through walking through the First Year & Second Year Jitters.
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