MANILA, Philippines—Twenty-five-year-old Anna Katrina Karaan does not consider herself superstitious.

 

But because Karaan thought she needed all the intervention she could get when she took the architectural board exam in January, she did what nonbelievers in the stars and old sayings would have thought unconscionable: She had the pencil she would use for the exam sharpened not by herself but by a licensed architect in the hope that the skills he had to pass the grueling exam would be passed on to her.

 

“It was something we had heard in the review centers,” Karaan, who now laughed at the idea, told the Inquirer in a phone interview.

 

Soon after, Anna K, as she is sometimes fondly called, topped the board exam with a score of 87.2 percent.

 

Of the 1,442 who took the exam, only 793 passed, according to the Professional Regulatory Commission (PRC).

 

“I really didn’t expect this,” Karaan said.

 

Difficult exam

 

Karaan, who graduated cum laude from the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman, said she had actually found some parts of the exam “really obscure” and “difficult,” so much so that she was left merely “hoping” she had passed.

 

In fact, she recalled that when she and her friends who were fellow examinees met outside after the test, they were “all just staring at each other.”

 

“We were all just asking ourselves, ‘What just happened there?’” she said.

 

When a friend from Aidea Philippines Inc., the architectural firm where she has been working for more than a year, approached her on Friday and informed her that she had topped the board exam, Karaan said she did not believe it.

 

Squealing heard

 

She said that before she informed her family about anything, another person had to confirm that she had indeed garnered the top spot.

 

“So I called my mom and my dad and my two siblings and told them,” she said, adding that she heard “a lot of squealing” from her mother, Camille.

 

“My dad had wanted to check the PRC website and see my name there,” she said.

 

Karaan’s mother works for the Primer Group of Companies, and her father, Jovencio Juan, for San Miguel Corp.

 

Her elder sister Maria is a lecturer at Ateneo de Manila University and her younger brother Jason is a student there.

 

Apart from being the director and subsequently the chairperson of the Academics, Culture and Research committee of the UP Architecture Forum, an academic organization, Karaan became the yearbook editor of her batch.

 

After her graduation in 2012, she did not review for the board right away.

 

Instead, she went on a three-month vacation.

 

“That was a five-year course (in architecture)!” she said, laughing.

 

She said that during her vacation, she went on trips with friends, and even went on solo flight to Singapore and Malaysia.

 

It was in September 2012 when she started attending review classes on architectural basics in a center on East Ave. in Quezon City.

 

Design classes

 

Sometime in November 2012, she said she started attending design classes at the United Architects of the Philippines headquarters in Tomas Morato, also in Quezon City.

 

She said she attended a general review in the same center on East Avenue a week before the board.

 

Now an architect, Karaan says she plans to hold on to her present job.

 

“I have very supportive officemates, and I feel like I have different things to learn,” she said.

 

She said she also plans to pursue higher studies, particularly a master’s degree in urban planning abroad.

 

She said she felt like there was a big need for good urban planners.

 

“That’s where I see myself heading. And it’s a way to give back,” she said.