December 10, 2002
Have you ever taken the road less traveled? When you drive home from work, do you ever explore? Sure, it might take longer than usual, and there may be unpleasant stops along the way, but occasionally you will find an unexpected surprise. By casting aside strict conventions and routines and by taking risks, we can achieve things we never considered or thought possible.
I find that many people in our religiously capitalist society only seek the fastest, cheapest, and most efficient route. While some industries hire to increase diversity and thereby innovation, many dare not attempt anything new. In particular, many established architects and developers fear taking chances, and fear the risk of failure inherent in untested methods. I, on the other hand, believe that architects must not feel constrained by the past, but must follow-up on promising possibilities.
Exploring undiscovered methods and paths requires self-criticism, self-assurance, and courage.
In my junior year in college, I doubted the teaching style of my instructor in my first marketing class. I felt as if he pushed his own rigid ideas into the students' creations, and did not allow the students the opportunity to pursue their own original ideas. Fearing my intellectual growth might be stunted by his lectures and dissatisfied with his teaching, I basically taught myself researching and combed through hundreds of marketing and economy books. Through my own studies, I came to realize that marketing
should be learned, not preached. That semester, I further challenged myself by working on a class of my own creation, a research not assigned by my instructor. While it would have been easier to accept the instructor' s lessons and just follow his ideas, I realized that I could never take the easy way again now that I discovered that the beauty...