I’ve never worked so hard to fail so much.
This semester is insane for me, academically speaking.
I’m taking physics (my worst & most hated subject), structures (a mix of physics & studio), and studio (insaneness-level goes with out saying).
Now, just trust me when I say that I like to play.
But this year I spend almost every chance I get studying; in between classes, at home, before sleep, at church, after small group, you get the picture.
Last Tuesday, we had a quiz in structures. I admit, I’ve spent the least time getting to know the material in that class, but I thought, “I should know enough to at least put down some work & get partial credit.” I was aiming for a 75%. When we got the quiz I thought to myself, ” What the eff. How do I even start this problem??” It’s even worse when everyone else around you, including your own studio friends & roommate seems to know what the hell is going on. I sat there for 30 minutes drawing triangles on my paper, guessing at where the forces & loads on the stupid object might be. I wrote down two answers that I knew on my life were wrong… the other two questions I didn’t even attempt. My first completely failed quiz. I walked out feeling pretty sad/frustruated with myself, but later thought, “okay, I’ll just start studying harder, and we get one quiz dropped anyway.”
But I can’t even express the craziness of the last couple days. Yesterday was our final review for studio, but let me just retrace some of my thoughts…
Friday T-5:
9am First class of the day. Luckily, it only runs for an hour & is my only class of the day. Unluckily, I have a physics problem set due at 11pm every Friday nights, yay me. I spent the whole Friday learning about forces and free body diagrams and finally finished my problem set just before FiCB. “It took me 8 hours to finish reading and going through everything, but I STILL don’t get it, and now I’m screwed for studio.”
Saturday T-4:
8am-1130am KCPC praise team meeting & practice. Loved it. Even though I should have been in studio, it was really refreshing going to KCPC on an early Saturday morning & starting the day off right. Not to mention, Isaac, Kevin, Nathan and I had some BOMB ramen at the Ranch99 after practice was over & watched my phone’s screen change as Minnesota’s QB threw an interception in the fourth quarter = win for the Golden Bears & my baby, the Heisman candidate made 5 touchdowns 
. Got to studio around 230pm planing to finish my design on the 3-d modeling computer program & start my physical model, but didn’t finish either and ended up going home at 2am.
Sunday T-3:
815am – 330pm Church. Had a horrible start to the day: in a nutshell, my phone SUCKS & randomly turns off so instead of being woken up at 7 by my alarm, Julia woke me up at 7:36am via Isaac’s call. We were supposed to leave at 7:45. But once we got to church, we had a good practice, good service, and thank you to my class people who helped serve during lunch . After lunch, Awana people usually get an hour of downtime & instead of going to Target and Costco with the rest of them, I stayed to study physics. I got the ” o_O is she serious riightnow” from every passerby. Started Awana at 12:45… I realize more and more each week how much I love those kids. They scream, cry, and wreak havoc, but are the sweetest, most intelligent, and beautiful children of God. They give me energy and drain it at the same time haha. In any case, I came home at around 4 thinking, I’M EFFED FOR STUDIO, which I was. But thankfully, I finalized my design and was ready to show my work to my professor during my desk critique the next day. Went to sleep around 3:30am.
Monday T-2:
9am-1pm Studio. I had my desk critique pretty early on, but after showing my professor my design, he pretty much told me to rework my design. Not that any of this was a problem, I know he’s just trying to push the design potential to the limit, but REALLY?? “Less than two days until my final review and I should change my design now?? Okay, I can do it.” Though really stressed, I jumped into designing, had a lunch break for 30 minutes, went to physics discussion from 2-4 & back to the grind. At 9pm we had our class prayer meeting. Just to be really honest, I walked into prayer meeting not expecting much knowing that I hadn’t prayed or even thought about my class for a while. I was really encouraged by the number of people who came out, and the small group that I was in seriously encouraged me, though it didn’t really hit me until the next day. I went back to studio at 10, finalized my design by around 12am & started my sketch plaster model and went to sleep at 430am.
TUESDAY T-1:
11am-1230pm Structures lecture. I bought my materials for my final model, ate lunch with a couple Junior boys & headed to the dungeon (Wurster). I was actually really determined & uncannily. I measured out all of the dimensions, made really clean cuts, etc. Things were going pretty well and I decided to take a break and catch the last part of the LB game. Got to studio and realized if I don’t work faster, I won’t be able to finish my digital poster. Here, starts the anxiousness.
12am: “I should be done with this by now…” I started to work faster.
1am: “I should REALLY be done with this by now…” Panic.
2am: “I should start on my digital poster, but I can’t just drop everything and start it because it’ll look like crap anyway since I don’t have time & I won’t have a model if I stop. Keep going.” At some point from 2-3 I dropped something heavy on my toe and my toenail broke off -_-
3am: “If I don’t finish this now, my plaster won’t try in time.” PANIC.
4am: “I worked too sloppily, what the hell am I going to do if this doesn’t stand.” hands start to shake.
5am: “I’m not going to be able to finish.” insanity.
6am: ” I can’t finish.” Hysteria.
7am: My mold for the plaster was complete, but I knew for a fact it wouldn’t stand and would crack in all the places it shouldn’t, meaning I wouldn’t have model. Once I start pouring my plaster, it started leaking everywhere in several places. “I CANNOT believe this is happening.”
“I am f*cked.”
8am: Climbing the stairwell to the 9th floor to start my digital poster with one hour left while everyone else spent 8 hours+ on theirs. Stifling tears.
9am: Speechless.
9:10am: I picked up my previous models and dropped both, breaking BOTH. I picked up my new model and it immediately cracked. Printed out the worst poster anyone will ever bring to an Arch 100A review. Pinned up, sat down, let the hell begin.
9:30am D-DAY
Calmed myself down, “just do it.” I gave my professor & the jurors my spiel and prayed for myself so that I wouldn’t cry after they tore me apart.
“Your design has a lot of potential. I can tell you’ve been working hard, things just didn’t work out for you today. Your poster is hard to understand, but I can help you with that.”
“I’ll help you.”
At this point, I’m in disbelief, confused, relieved?? They didn’t tear me apart. They didn’t even critique me at the horrible craftsmanship of the model. Instead, they thanked me for bringing it down despite it’s brokenness because it helped informed them of how I was working, what the form of the structure looked like. Though it was a final review, they treated it as a work in progress, something I can continue working at and pushing the boundaries of.
Ultimate mercy.
Do I sense an analogy? Albeit, a poor one, it speaks Volumes to me.
Instead of judgment, I received grace…
Before these last few days I never knew what it felt like to pass the point of exhaustion, to be THAT one person among the 75 students in studio who was completely effed, to brush off all other responsibilities, to neglect my own health, ignore my hunger, forget sleep, to work so hard and STILL fail, to feel absolutely helpless, to have all the life & kindness sucked out of me.
I reached what I think will be the lowest low of my academic career. Everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong, except the part that mattered — the final review.
But there’s only up from here, right?
) and watched taken & half of watchmen
