IT'S A MAGICAL place where Ernie dolls and toast dance from overhead mobiles and "the Love Train" is entertainment for the evening. It's not a '60s sitcom -- it's the Architecture school.
This week is "charrette," when second- and third-year students bring sleeping bags to Campbell Hall and any flat surface near their desk becomes a potential bed for the evening. The term originates from the French architecture school Beaux Arts -- where, according to visiting assistant professor John Maze, professors used to wheel around carts collecting students' final projects. Students would jump onto the carts as they went by in order to add the finishing details to their work.
The modern version of this perfectionism is charrette week, where, according to A-school students, the professors assign obscene amounts of work for finals week. The last few days before projects are due, second- and third-year students practically live by their workstations in order to finish their projects. At midnight on Tuesday they are on their honor to put down their pencils, for better or worse.
It sounds horrendous and stressful, like cruel and unusual punishment. But by the end of the week, the students have bonded in unique ways and the studio has become more than work -- it has become home.
Such brotherhood and spirit is hard to come by in today's academia, thanks to impersonal classes of four and five hundred and departments so big a student may not recognize anyone in a class. Architecture students are working hard, but they trade a week's worth of stress for a lifetime of camaraderie and memories. When it's all over, they too will have completed the rite of passage.
The end product of the week is a project including models, drawings and other renderings that can take up to 40 hours each to complete. Aaron Weil, a third-year Architecture student, says that "you get as much done as you can -- I for one never get the requirements done." He says that the more important idea is to present your project in the overall best light and complete the aspects of it that will best show it off to the professors -- once again referring to the perfectionism of charrette. Maze, once a U.Va. student himself who participated in this tradition, says that "this is mostly a reflection of the pride that students have in their work, to not let their projects end incompletely."
The same last-minute scramble happens in all schools of the University, but rarely in the same supportive environment. College students are more likely to be working alone in a lab in the basement or alone in front of their computers at home than in a large semi-social group. The next best thing is the computer rooms at Clemons, where silence is enforced and the doors close at 2:00 a.m. One student might spend half of an all-nighter staring silently at one of a thousand similar computers in Clemons and then trudge home at 2:00 a.m. to spend the second half of the night in isolation.
Contrast this with an Architecture student under the same amount of pressure: She has a personalized workstation in the large, open, bright studio. People decorate with stuffed animals, pictures of gorgeous beaches or amazing German buildings, their favorite poems, and CD players -- one guy even brought his dog. Though a student might spend countless hours working there, he also would get to know the people whose workstations are around his very well -- they can sympathize with the stress level and perhaps lighten the mood when the need is greatest.
That's where the Love Train comes in, says third-year student Heather Liebert. It's completely spontaneous -- a song might come on someone's CD player or a model may suddenly look like a funny hat, and the parade begins. Students pick up anything in sight that could somehow serve as a costume or decoration, they make anything else handy a musical instrument and they wind through the giant room's two floors. Suddenly, for a few minutes, the stress is gone and they are just a bunch of kids at play. Try thatin Alderman.
And the professors get involved too. Third-year student Kristi Dykema says that Professor Maze is "kind of an icon -- the students love him." He teaches the third-year studio, but he also does something just as important; he sympathizes with and respects his students.
"I feel that anyone who motivates themselves to work as hard as young A-School students do deserves to be piped out ceremonially," says Maze. Piped out? Oh yes, says Weil. Every year Maze dons a kilt and warms up his bagpipes for the end of charrette. "When you hear him warming up outside, you know you only have a few minutes left. That's when the real scribbling begins," says Weil.
Maze confirms that this year will be his seventh, and that he hopes to continue the tradition for decades to come. Dykema says that other professors join in the fun too, shaking hands and congratulating students for their hard work.
Though the work may not be enviable, the atmosphere is. If only more professors and students could relate in such a way, everyone's University experience would be richer. The relationships built between students during Charrette's Love Trains and long, sleepless nights are ones that will never be forgotten -- a far cry from the steely glances shot across the aisles at the talkers in Clemons.
So if you see an A-Schooler this week, smile at him kindly, but enviously. Their plight can best be summed up in this note left on a workstation: "Sorry I was in a bad mood before -- will try to be in a better one later." Later, when they look back on what they went through, they will smile and hopefully remember charrette fondly. The rest of us will just have to hope we can find a way to make our papers or lab work or research that memorable.
(Emily Harding's column appears Fridays inThe Cavalier Daily.)
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