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This is the Successful Archi Students podcast episode four.

Hey guys, welcome to today’s show. Today I want to talk about why I don’t care so much about my grades and the importance of failure. And I’ll talk about some my mistakes and some of the things I’ve failed as well so that you guys can learn from them.

So before getting into any of this, I just want to ask and put out a simple question of how many of you go through the feedback that your tutors or your jurors or your teachers, whatever you want to call them, that they give you? Do you go through the feedback that they leave on your assessments and on your submissions? I ask this because I never used to. The way it would work for me is that I would do an assessment, I would do my project, I would hand it up and I would get my grades back and I’d look at my grades like oh, cool, I did really well, really bad or really average, then I’d move on. There was nothing after receiving my grade. I wouldn’t really do anything with my feedback. I might say that “Oh, okay. I could do this better, this better. I did well at this”, but there was no real analysing of the things that my tutors were saying.

However, I believe the best lessons in life aren’t from your successes, but from your failures. And I completely believe that you don’t have to be the best at everything you do. There is room for making mistakes and failing and not doing really well as you think you would, because that’s okay. And I’ll be completely transparent here. I just got my grades back for my semester, my second year, second semester. So I’m now finished second year, I got my grades back. And I did well in two of my subjects, in design studio and in my design media, however, I didn’t do so well in my design construction multi story. In fact, I got a P2, which is just, actually, I got a P1, which is just passing pretty much And to be honest, it doesn’t bother me at all what the grade was, and I think it’s okay to fail. Because if you’re not failing, you’re not pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone and outside your boundaries that you know, however, I don’t think it’s okay to fail the same thing twice, because that means you’re not learning from your mistakes and you’re kind of just skimming over the things you’ve done bad. And there’s no lesson to be learned from that. So I didn’t do too well in this one subject. However, I didn’t dwell on it. Instead, I asked myself, why did I do bad in this? It’s a Simple question. But if you don’t ask it, then you won’t realize where you went wrong and you won’t be able to learn from your mistakes.

And so what I used to do, where I just move on, after I see received my grade, I was lacking them in the next semester and the next semester and the next semester after that, because I haven’t learned from my previous mistakes, and so there’s no progressing forward. So after my semester, what I did is I grabbed a pad in the pen, and I wrote down my three subjects design media, design, studio design, construction, multi story, and I wrote down the grades I got, and I started with the one I did best, which was my studio, and I considered why I did as well as I did. And the reason was because I went to all my classes and I brought work every single week that my teachers could give me feedback on and I could go on, grab their feedback and make changes to my work base of what they said about my design, maybe I did well at that because I just slaved on that for lots and lots of hours and why I didn’t do So Well, on my construction multistorey I wrote down: because I didn’t go to all my classes, I became lazy.

I would always be the last to talk to my teachers during my tutoring sessions. And by the end of the day, I would be tired and I’d be hungry and I’d make the excuse of that I’m too hungry, I’m going to go home and eat and then sleep. However, I did this once I did this maybe twice, maybe three times. And that compounds up and it builds up. And so when you fall behind one week, that’s going to keep on rolling over to the next week and the next week, and you’re really going to fall extremely behind. And that’s exactly what happened to me. I fell behind from the start, because I was lazy and I was making excuses not to go to my class. And so I missed out on the opportunity of talking with my teachers and getting their feedback so that I can make amendments and changes to my own work and that is ultimately the reason why I didn’t do so well in this subject. I put in the same amount of hours I would put into any other project. But because I didn’t have that feedback, I wasn’t able to make the changes. And I wasn’t able to understand what I was doing wrong. And so when it came to it, my details were completely wrong. And although they looked really nice, and I put in the time and effort to, you know, try my hardest with them, I just didn’t have the same result as everybody else, because I didn’t have that opportunity of talking with my teachers, because I deprived myself of that opportunity. So yes, I’m blaming myself completely. And I think that’s also very important to do as well.

If you’re blaming other people, and you’re making alibis saying that they’re the reason why you didn’t do so well. You know, “I had bills to pay”, “ I didn’t have the time to work on it because I was working on something else” or “an event came up”. Well, that’s okay. But blame yourself for it because then you can learn from it and move on. So that next time you don’t make that same mistake.

So there’s this quote, which goes, “the smoothest stone is always in the roughest part of the stream.” And what that kind of means in terms of being an architecture student is that through failing and being pushed through the shitty times and the hard times, that is what makes you the best student you can be because you’re then learning from your mistakes and becoming a lot more knowledgeable.

I believe that if you’re not failing, then you’re not pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone and outside of your own boundaries, so that you can’t learn. But this raises the question, why do we care about our grades anyway? Most the time, it’s to impress other people around us, whether it be our family or our friends, or the people we go to school with. We want to look like we’re doing well so that we can feel good about ourselves. However, I don’t think you should care about the opinions of others because that will be holding you back from trying new things.

You might have one specific architectural drawing style. However, if you never try something new then you might not know if there’s a better way to do it. So rather than using your same style every single semester you have, I think you should probably try different things and spice it up so that you’re not always doing that same thing. And you might not get as good of a grade as you usually would. But then you will know for next time that if you can, you can rule that one out. But you never know, that architectural drawing style might be a lot better than the one you originally had. But you wouldn’t know that if you didn’t try it. So you’ve got to try new things.

So I think that’s my lesson for you guys today. Don’t stop learning after you receive your grades. Definitely analyse why you did the way you did. So why you got an average grade, why you got a really good grade or why you did a really why you got a really bad grade this semester. Because if you don’t ask yourself those questions, you can’t learn from the work you’ve been doing. I think a lot of the time we skip over the feedback because we’re only caring about getting the work done and getting our grade and then getting our degree and that’s the end of it. But if you want to be successful it’s a lot more than that. You really need to understand why you’re doing what you’re doing. And you need to be able to have some clarity in that so that you can get better at the stuff you’re going to be doing. Because ultimately, what you’re doing now is what you’re going to be doing in the future as your profession. And you’re going to have clients and you’re going to, if you want to run your own firm, you need those skills before you you’re able to work for yourself and create the lifestyle you want from that.

So you can learn from your successes, but you will learn even more from your failures because then you can move forward. It’s okay to fail just don’t fail the same thing twice. And that is ultimately why I don’t care about my grades in architecture school.

I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. If you did, please leave some feedback. Leave some comments and message me on Instagram.

I’ll see you on the next episode of the Successful Archi Student’s Podcast.

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This is the Successful Archi Student’s podcast, Episode Two. Welcome to the second episode of the Successful Archi Student’s podcast. That’s right, today is number two. It doesn’t really sound right. Anyways, today I’ll be talking a little bit more about what I was talking about in the last episode about the number one tip for success as a student. In that episode, I talked about the importance of fixing your mindset, which I understand is quite difficult to understand if there’s no further clarification on that. So I’m going to try and clear some things up about what I meant by that. A lot of people and students talk themselves down and have a lot of negative self talk and thoughts without really noticing it. And it really limits their potential and their skill level. Telling yourself you can’t do something immediately closes off that as an option.

So, what I mean by this is say, if you’re telling yourself you can’t get a job after you graduate, because there’s no jobs out there, or if you’re trying to get into university and you’re telling yourself, you can’t afford it. Or maybe you’ve seen some other student’s work on Instagram and you’re telling yourself your work will never be as good as that. These objections only become true when you realize them as being true. Until then they are completely achievable. So rather than saying it’s not possible, ask yourself, How can I make it possible? If no one is hiring? Well, that’s the perfect opportunity to start your own work. If you can’t get into university because you can’t afford it, you’re living in the the age of fundraising, you know, there’s a million and one ways to raise the capital. Or, you need to be able to go to university and just telling yourself that you can’t afford it. It’s just kind of an excuse for not being able to do it. If you’re telling yourself your project will never look that good. Rather than doing that, ask yourself, How can I make my project look as good as that or better? So this would take time and practice to turn this into a habit. The idea of replacing I can’t with how can I? But I truly, truly believe that once you start implementing this idea and this habit, you’ll be opened up to so many more opportunities that you never realized before.

When I told my friends and family that I work over 30 hours a week in my part time job and study full time, obviously putting in a lot of hours into my education. And I mentioned that I want to start my own brand to help students succeed. They kind of just laughed at me and told me it’s not possible. And if I had listened to them, and said, Oh, yeah, it’s not possible. I don’t have time to be able to do that. Then, you know, I wouldn’t be here today talking on this podcast. Instead, I respected the idea that this is their opinions. And instead, I asked myself, how can I make this possible? How can I work over almost full time hours at my part time job and work forward? I’m studying full time as well putting in close to 80 hours a week and still have time to work on successful Archi Student.

The answer involved a lot of late nights and kind of sacrificing some of the more luxurious things in life like sitting on the couch and watching Netflix and scrolling through social media, but I fully committed to this. And now I’m waking up every morning working on something I’m truly passionate about. But often when I talk about delaying gratification, and putting off kind of the luxurious things in life now so that you can have them later in life at a multiplied level, they aren’t usually luxurious things at all. Things like scrolling through social media, or sitting on the couch and watching reality TV shows. They’re not really fulfilling things in life, I’d much prefer to be working on something that truly gets me fired up and something I’m passionate about. And we kind of just get carried away in this day and age with these things we react to. We get caught up reacting to these things. Instead of creating our own stuff and working on something that we plan to have done. That’s why procrastinating is really popular at the moment, because we do just get carried away with these “instant gratifiers” that just carry us away to be reactive rather than productive.

I do think this kind of happens because of a fear of missing out. We feel we’re missing out on watching the new show or, fear of missing out that we’re going to miss one of our friends post and we’re not going to like it and they’re going to notice that and they’re going to roast us about it. But I truthfully believe that we’re fearing missing out on the wrong thing.

But how do you build up that passion to be to be doing something you love every single day, working on architecture, working on cool buildings, and doing what you love every single day? It’s like, if you’re aiming at a dartboard blind sighted trying to hit the bullseye, you’re not really going to hit it. If you’ve got a blindfold on or yours eyes are closed, it’s hard to hit that bullseye. If you want to hit the bullseye, you have to be clear-sightedly looking at it, aiming at it using all your attention on that and truly being tunnel visioned on it so that you you’re only focused on that.

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And that’s exactly like life, if you’re trying to get somewhere in life, you want to run your own architecture firm, you want to be successful at architecture, you have to have a clear vision and a goal of how you’re going to get there and what it actually is, if you actually know what you want out of life, it makes it so much easier to start working towards it and start structuring a plan and working towards that goal.

So I think my kind of call to action here is to is to write down your goals and constantly come back to them and revise them and rethink them and restructure them. And then over time, you’ll find yourself just being way more motivated and and keen to succeed because of this. You can actually start making it happen just by having that vision in mind and knowing what it is you want to achieve.

It does involve discipline and hard work but that’s just a requirement of success. It’s something that needs to be done. So you may as well to do it sooner than later.

So to recap over this episode, stop telling yourself negative things. If you’re saying you can’t do something, then you can’t do it. But if you’re asking yourself the question of “how can I achieve this, how can I make this possible”, then it makes it easier. And you’re not limiting yourself to not being able to achieve that thing. Once you start writing down your goals. And you start to realize the life that you want to live and you have a bigger vision of that, then you start to realize you fear missing out on some really silly things such as social media and sitting on the couch watching Netflix.

The idea of that it takes time and hard work and discipline to be successful. So you might as well put in that hard work, discipline and time sooner than later. So that’s the number one tip I have for architecture students is to know what you’re aiming at. It makes it so much easier to achieve stuff when you’ve got a vision of it and you can start to plan and schedule towards that to make it possible. Thank you guys so much for watching the episode. I really appreciate your guys support and until next time, enjoy your studies.

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What’s going on guys? My name is Kyle, welcome to the podcast. This is the very first episode of the Successful Archi Student Podcast. I am so fired up to be here, it’s been a very long time coming. I’ve been wanting to do this probably for a little over eight months. You guys would know this better than anyone, Architecture students don’t have a whole lot of time on their hands. But saying that I’m now finished my second year and I have holidays and so I’m going to have the next couple of months to kind of give you guys some content with the podcast. So, yes, welcome to the podcast. This is going to be a lot of fun and you guys are going to learn a lot from this I’m hoping. Before I get into today’s content though, I want to talk a little bit about Successful Archi Student and kind of what what it is and why I decided to start it really. So Successful Archi Student is a platform I guess for students to come together and share their ideas and to grow as architects. I want to turn you into the 1% of architecture students that end up getting a job and really having success in your profession. Because there’s a lot of things that universities don’t teach such as how to get a job and gain motivation and set some goals that will really take your skills to the next level and give you the life you want to live. Whether you’re still in high school and you’re just thinking about the profession or you’re on the other side, where you’ve just graduated and you’re trying to find a job. That’s what Successful Archi Student’s all about. Just helping you guys succeed in your profession and in your education, I guess.

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So at the moment, we are just on Instagram, I guess, like we’ve got the website where I post some blog articles and we’ve got some other things going on like the Facebook page. But primarily we are just on Instagram, which, it’s good and I really enjoy connecting with you guys and Talking about kind of architecture in general and how you guys are going with your studying. I speak with a lot of people overseas, in different countries, and it is just great connecting with you guys. I think you guys are what makes a Successful Archi Student what it is. So I’m really appreciative for you guys. But saying that it is good to have that Instagram page and to be able to do that. But I can only really post these quick images or these short videos, I guess where I don’t really get into a whole lot of content about what I really intended Successful Archi Student to be about. And so that’s why I started the podcast now.

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Hopefully, I can delve into some of these topics with a lot more depth and really bring some light to the world of architecture to you guys. So with the podcast, I’m hoping to be able to bring some professional and working architects onto the show To ask them some questions and because these guys and gals are working in the profession, and they’ve been through the education, they’ve obviously succeeded doing what they are. So I think to be able to bring some architects onto the show and learn from them would do Myself and you guys a whole lot of good, I guess, for lack of a better word. But yeah, so that’s something I’m planning on doing with the show. I also want to bring you guys onto the show as well. I feel like if you’ve done a really good project, and your teachers absolutely loved it, and all your friends and your peers, told you how well you did, I don’t think you should keep that to yourself. I really think to be able to bring you guys onto the show, to talk about your projects and if you’ve got some study tips for other students as well, I think it would just be a great opportunity to share with each other and to be able to learn as architecture students from one another. So, that’s one of my main goals for the podcast is to bring you guys on to talk about your projects. Some of you fourth and fifth year students as well have a lot of information and some good tips. You’ve been talking to me on Instagram as well. So to bring some of you guys onto the show, and some architects as well, I think would give you guys some amazing value, myself too. So that’s pretty much all I’ve got to say about the podcast, I think we should get straight into the content now. Today I want to talk about the number one thing to help you succeed as an architecture student. A lot of you guys message me on Instagram and say, what’s the one tip? The one hack, or, there’s a bunch of words, the one clue; that you have that will make you a successful architecture student. And really, that’s a that’s a tough question. And there’s not really just one simple answer because it is very dependent on the on who you are on where you’re studying and, and what your story is. There’s a whole lot that goes on behind That question. But despite that, I’ve been thinking about it and playing in my head over and over. Like, what is that one? That one thing if I could give you guys one tip to help you succeed as an Archi student, what would it be?

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And I was thinking, maybe it’s one of the three P’s. You know, you’ve got passion, persistence, and patience, if you’ve got all three of those that is going to be, it’s going to do a hell of a lot to help you succeed and being patient, being persistent and being passionate about what you do that those three things that are keys. But then I also thought it could be your habits and the routines you create in your life, you know, the fact that you don’t check your phone every 15 minutes when you’re studying, because that’s a habit you’ve created, or you’ve created a good habit of waking up early every morning. And that’s the one thing that helps you succeed. Then I also thought maybe it’s the ability to sacrifice the finer things in life now, so that you can reap the rewards later. The idea of delaying gratification, that’s that kind of idea of; rather than partying now and studying later you study now so you can party later stress free and you’ve just, yeah, delaying gratitude, you’re delaying the gratification in your life.

But when I really narrowed it down it wasn’t just one of these individual three things. I had to think about what all three of those had in common. And it was your mindset, if you’re having negative thoughts and you’re telling yourself these toxic things. Yeah, it doesn’t matter how patient you are doesn’t matter how persistent you are. Doesn’t matter if you’ve got the most amazing routines in your life. You know, that’s the one thing that’s holding you back from achieving greatness.

Now I know this is quite a broad answer to “fix your mindset”. But I truly believe that once you start to organize your thoughts to work for you, then you know waking up becomes easy, drafting lines becomes easy, making models becomes easy. Just because that is what drives your passion in the end.

Now, I think I’m probably going to end the episode there because I want to keep these short and snappy, but I’m going to talk about this a bit more in the next episode. And a little spoiler, I guess, but it’s about having a bigger vision, and planning out kind of what the future holds for you. Because once you use your imagination to conjure up this idea of a successful life, then it makes it a whole lot easier to have something to drive towards. And I think that’s when you become successful. So yes, thank you guys so much for listening. I really hope to see you in the next episode, and I really hope to hear from a couple of you via email or Instagram direct message. If you guys want to be on the show, just send me an email Kyle@successfularchistudent.com. That’s K Y L E at successful archi student.com or message me on instagram just @successfularchistudent thank you guys again so much you guys are what make successful archi student great and I really appreciate you guys watching this thank you and I’ll see you in the next show.