If you are one of the brave souls on the journey to architecture licensure in the United States, you know well that there are many hoops to jump through. On top of completing your education and racking up all those required AXP hours, you need to meet specific state requirements and file a bunch of paperwork with an often unresponsive and disorganized state board.
Then come the exams. You are required to pass a set of 6 exams at the minimum. In California you have a 7th, the California Supplemental Exam. It’s estimated that you should spend at least 100 hours per exam, which adds up to about 600 hours, given that you don’t fail any. The average ARE test taker fails 2 of the exams. Often, you’re taking these exams on top of full-time work and/or kids and pets. Just life in general.
The exam process, however, does not have to suck! In fact, it’s imperative that you find a way to incorporate some joy into studying. There is valid psychological reasoning for this. Enjoying the process of studying helps you retain information more easily. Who knows? Maybe you’ll retain all this well after you get through the exams. In an ideal world, you’d be able to recall your studies easily in a professional setting in the future.
Here are a few strategies that may help you enjoy studying more:
- Set a routine. Set aside the same time each day to study. Take a look at your schedule, what you’re accustomed to, and when you believe your brain is most active. This is conducive to deep focus and will help slowly build enjoyment in the study process. Much like starting at a gym, this may be painful at first. But having a stable routine will eventually start to feel gratifying.
- Reward yourself. There are two steps to this. Firstly, set a timer for incremental studying. Incremental studying is the amount of time you are able to achieve deep focus without starting to burn out. Everyone’s brain works differently, so it may take some trial and error to figure out what your time increment is. For many, it’s around 45 minutes. But it could look like 30 minutes or even 1.5 hours for others. Next, allow yourself a little reward after each increment. This reward could be a snack, something healthy and energy boosting. Try to avoid sugar, alcohol, or heavy carbs when snacking. You could also reward yourself with a break doing something you enjoy, like watering your plants or watching a bit of YouTube.
- Log your hours in a fun way. Often, this is critical to holding yourself accountable for studying. Look to Bullet Journaling to really design the ways you spend your time. Get creative! You can use markers for color coding and stickers to symbolize how you felt your day’s studying went. Anything to make the habit of logging hours fun.
- Make studying a game. Finding ways to make it fun and create challenges for yourself. One of the best ways is to use flashcards, which sounds like a no-brainer but there are tools out there to make it fun. Try ARE Inquizition, an iOS study app that makes studying with flashcards and quizzes more accessible when you’re on the go. It makes studying just a little bit more enjoyable, and incorporating joy into the process is an important part of absorbing all that information. Another way is to use real-life situations to test your knowledge. Passing by a construction site? Try to identify the type of construction or structural system. Integrating knowledge more seamlessly into your everyday life and having fun doing it helps you absorb the content better.
We hope this handy guide helps those of you on the journey to licensure. Best of luck!
