Pay-it-forward reality

     I’m currently acting as a third-party adviser for a few senior students in UST doing their thesis, sort of a mentor cum critic cum yoda rolled into one really huge sushi roll. I have very high hopes for them because they represent the cream of this batch, and I hope they kick ass. Don’t get the impression that I’m the first graduate to help out thesis students in UST… this thing has been happening from batch to batch, in an informal pay-it-forward kind of deal, and I would like to pass on what I’ve learned from all my mentors … from the faculty, my dad and tito, the staff in the office, mac, marv… I’m just stating where credit is due.

 

     So now, its my turn…  and I had to rip them from their initial dreams and visions of a magnificent Frank Gehry-like sculptural building and anchor them to the ground. Every year, so many senior students have this “postcard” perspective view of their proposed thesis, sitting magnificently next to a river, a lake or an ocean… with a beautifully lit afternoon sun, with the wispy clouds paint-brushed to perfection…

 

     A vision no doubt perpetuated by what students see in Vision magazine (the college mag) and Bluprint, both of which have done very well in optically documenting outstanding work, both built and imagined… but the sad thing is that, even if a picture is worth a thousand words, it does not talk about the depth and the breadth, the logic, the economics, the nitty-gritty of the design being showed in the pictures. All we get is shallow coffeetable-book commentary on something that undertook a whole year’s work.

 

     The problem is that, because of this, students are left with this hollow beautiful vision of something that they do not fully understand and comprehend. So… lesson number 1 for my little padawans was very simple:

 

     You are here not to impose your will on the project/problem, not to impose your ego on the project… You are here to learn how to solve it.

 

     With all due respect to Manolo Noche… one of the better professors in UST, yes I admire his idealism and his dreamy vision of things, but the truth is that, these students will be graduating into the real world. And yes, its good to teach them about the ideal, but first and foremost a school should equip students for what is real, because if they do not survive the initial onslaught of the real world, then they won’t be around to preach and change things to what is real!

 

     I read in a recent Time issue talking about how West Point educates and teaches its graduates… It teaches them how to survive and how to win battles and wars… by closely simulating the real thing. And I think that’s exactly what UST should do… because the truth is simple… Architecture is an old-man’s profession. And when you say old man… we’re talking about the survivors, the veterans, the steely-eyed mentors and masters who’ve looked into the eyes of pain-in-the-ass, sons-of-bitches, low-life, mud-slinging clients… architects who have lived to tell the tale, but the sad thing is that these are the same people who have become too jaded to make a difference!

    

     Youth is so wasted on the young… I hope to save this entry so that hopefully, when I’m as old and jaded as they are, I remember how passionate and fiery I was about making a difference in the profession and in my beloved city and country…