N E W

Starting the semester with excitement became tough for me after failing to defend my thesis. For a moment, it made me unmotivated to do things that I wanted to do. But after the days of meditating and reflecting that event, I decided to stand up. “There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure”, Paulo Coelho once said. I won’t be able to achieve my dreams if I will not quit moping around. I should start moving forward and reflect on the mistakes that I’ve done. And so, a new journey has begun.

On our first day of class, a new approach or strategy for the Architectural Comprehensive course was introduced to us. Although we were aware that there will be activities such as sketches, blogs, and writing a fifty-sheet “May I Always Build”, it was still a shock to the whole section since it was a different method of teaching compared to our past comprehensive course. We were used to the traditional teaching style of our past instructors so this will be a challenge for us-- a last semester challenge for the (other) architecture fifth-year students. As our discussion went by, we knew that this new learning style will be able to help us a lot in our thesis. We knew that if we accept this challenge, we will be warriors equipped with full armor and weapons that will make us push through and become victorious to an incoming war.

Our profession reminds us that we should never stop learning. We may become an architect one day, but we still need to take opportunities on learning new things through other people, professionals, and experiences in order to grow successfully in our chosen field. Similar to what have been discussed in the meeting, we must enable ourselves to explore other international building laws, standards, and practices. Stepping outside the box, letting yourself to absorb new learnings, and with diligence, one should be able to be successful.