the aftermath

"Nothing, before its time."
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  Alicia Keys

For the thousands of my brethren, my comrade-at-arms, my kindred spirits, who have taken the recent Licensure Examination for Architects last January, this week spells the inimitable wait towards finding out, revoking all previous qualms and uncertainties, if we have earned the legal and professional right to call ourselves architects.
 
For many, including myself, it is the culmination of years of toil and hardship, roasting within the confines of apprenticeship programs spread across every conceivable practice format, for some it is merely a formality to legitimately be referred to by what they have been practicing for some period, and for the recently-graduated youth who took the path ahead of their pack it is but another feather upon their heavily-borne hats.

Fermenting anxiety, poured with a healthy dose of anticipation, with just the right dash of panic, and tossed in a heaping bowl of agit paranoia approximately describes the vertiginous emotional somersaulting my fragile being is enduring, has undergone, and will continue to be battered with for the next few days. Much has been said, both online and offline, about what has transpired in those two days, within the confines of the testing venues. It has been red-marked, highlit, and footnoted, tweeted, re-tweeted, posted, commented upon, and conversed on ad nauseum. It is in this light, the suffocating media in res that I find myself in, that I reckon this is neither the appropriate venue, nor my ethical place to narrate, contemplate, exposit, or even posit about the contents of the exam, nor my thoughts on my personal experience. For at the end of the day, these are all mere opinions, individual judgements strung and given strength by the context of shared pain. And, in the end, only one opinion matters - that of the Board of Architecture.

When the day ends, and we swim in utter unrest upon our beds, defeated by the cumbersome volume of stress, the unstirring silence of the night offer little solace against the slowly creeping, unsettling barrage of anxiety that blanket us, built atop the unallayed fear of the unrelenting unknown. It is as if patience is now the prized commodity, no longer sleep, testing our resolve, challenging our mettle, upon the cusp of reckoning. We cannot prevent the inevitable, nor hasten the untimely. But I hope to find comfort in knowing that I am not alone in this plight, isolated maybe, but never distinctly singular.

I would like to give the PR BoA, and the PRC for that matter, the benefit of the doubt. It is difficult to formulate opinions, and theories on a system we are not privy to, on a methodology we lack the competency for, and the responsibility we are unburdened with. Maybe, post-results-release, I will be singing a different tune, but I believe that would be looking too far into the future for a morsel of information I cannot possibly speculate on, nor even desire to.

To prepare oneself, in all manner and aspects, is all we can do. Speculative thoughts do not matter in the purgatorial void of wait. They merely serve to confuse, confound, complicate, and constrict us from functioning. This is not to undermine, nor downplay, the gravity of the board exam, but rather to locate it in the context of things. We can only hope to receive positive, affirmative, and festive news.

As would-be architects; patience, clarity of thought, alacrity, and sound-mindedness are priceless tools we must possess in our folio of acuities. And this wait seems to be the most opportune time to practice these assets. We can rise above the tempest of this festering fear, and treat it with with the fond curiosity of spice - often unpalatable by itself but as an additive imbues food with fragrant, flavorful, and florid satisfaction.

To my fellow future-architects, cheers!




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Hours after this post was published, I received the good news upon my arrival at the office that I, surprisingly and quite unexpectedly, have passed the Licensure Examination for Architects. It felt such a release to receive very wonderful news in the wake of the rather complexly unsettling and confounding events that transpired during, before, and after the board exams.