In It to Win It...

I was sitting back thinking of some of the horrific things I went through in school. When I think back about how devastating these things were at the time, I remember that I was also stressed beyond belief, sleep-deprived, and eating a bunch of crap. My body and mind were pushed to the limit; it’s a wonder I never stroked out during those three years.

The Late Night Exam

One dark and chilly night during my first semester of Interior design classes, my teacher gave out a test in my CAD (Computer Aided Drafting) class. We had 3 hours to complete a set of computer-generated floor plans. Our class was so large that there weren’t enough computers for everyone, so several people volunteered to work on laptops. I was one of them. I plugged my laptop into an available outlet and waited for the handout of the plans to be passed to me. So, I got started in a nervous panic, working frantically on drawing plans for a house.

I was about halfway through the test, when my screen popped up an error message that my computer would shut down shortly due to my soon-to-be-dead battery. Apparently my computer was plugged into an inoperable outlet. At this point, I was frantically searching high and low for a working power outlet, any outlet, wasting precious time! I eventually found one and was able to finish my test. As if that wasn’t stressful enough, it came at the end of a 12 hour day of school. I was on my way home, finally, at 11:00 at night when I ran over and surely killed a little dog. It wasn’t my fault; he ran out into the road, and I tried to stop. But, nevertheless, I bawled the entire hour drive home.

The Route 44 Debacle

I was on my way home from class one day, when like a lot of days, I stopped by my local Sonic. I was super-thirsty, tired, and had an entire night’s work ahead of me. It seemed like it took them forever to make a Route 44 Dr. Pepper. Usually, I just get a large drink, but today was an exception. It called for the big guns…a Route 44. This drink was my equivalent to a stiff drink after a hard day.

One thing I have always hated about my car is the cup holders. They are jammed in the dashboard right underneath the control panel. I can barely fit a normal large drink in the cup holder. So, I held that huge drink all the way home, which was about 7 minutes or so. As I struggled to get my school supplies out of the car, I rested my Route 44 Dr. Pepper on the hood of the car. To my dismay, hurricane force winds came barreling through and knocked my drink onto the ground. I was completely devastated and bawling once again, as I picked up my tragically empty cup from the ground.

The Missing Staircase

It was a typical night at the Duffey household during my first semester of architecture studio. I was busy at my drawing table working on plans for a house. We had an ongoing exercise in that class that included drawing a set of plans for an existing historical house with several floors. When I chose my house, I just knew I chose the easiest one. Alas, I was wrong. I chose a house with a deck on top, balconies off the sides, a loft on the inside, and… (Gasp!) a spiral staircase.

I spent hours and hours on each drawing. The drawings were to be done perfectly in pencil, then inked, which ohmygosh is the worst thing ever‼ The staircase gave me fits, but eventually it was done enough for me. I completed the final touches, then headed to bed for maybe 3 hours of sleep. I woke up groggy with the feeling I had been ran over by a truck. That’s when Justin proceeded to ask about my drawing. The dialog is as follows (to my best recollection):

Justin: Did you finish your staircase?

Erica: …Yeah, why?

Justin: Cause you sat up in the bed in the middle of the night and started mumbling about not finishing your staircase.

Erica: What did I say?

Justin: I don’t know…Something like, “I have to finish my staircase. The staircase is incomplete… The staircase is incomplete‼”

That’s when I knew I had a long road ahead, because that was only the first semester of six very trying ones. Not a day goes by that I’m not grateful it is over.

By the way, I love spiral staircases, just not drawing them…