Charting Your Own Path: Redefining Success

From the very first day of school, I lived with a focus on achievement and believed, as true success is nothing more than the grades received, that my path was already mapped out. Could I possibly mute the voices around me?

It was precisely these questions that led me to question the very definition of “success.” Throughout elementary, middle, and high school, according to my teachers and family, I was exceptionally successful. At the time, this was the sole source of my happiness. Yet I never truly considered what profession I wanted to pursue. Because those around me convinced me that success meant having the freedom to choose any career I might enjoy.

Then I took the university entrance exam, which so many of us face with immense stress. I achieved a very good score. But now what? How would I decide which career to choose?

I entered a deep process of research. According to my mother and teachers, I should become a doctor; according to my father, an engineer; according to my brother, a molecular biologist. But what should I be, according to myself?

A dream reminded me of my childhood aspirations and the moments when I had truly been happy. Without knowing what anyone else wanted for me or where my future might lead, I changed my entire preference list to Architecture.

I did not know at that moment whether my decision was “right” or “wrong.” In fact, I was afraid. For the first time, I was trying to define success from a place independent of others’ definitions. This meant stepping outside a system I had been accustomed to for years.

Choosing architecture was not merely a career decision for me—it was a decision about who I was. For the first time, I took the question “What do I want?” seriously.

When I began university, I realized that success was far more than the correct answers we wrote on exam papers. Sometimes the hours spent developing a design, sometimes persisting and trying again despite criticism, sometimes even doing nothing but thinking—these too were part of the process.

I will never forget my first project. The question was simple yet profoundly deep: “What is time?”
We were asked to answer this question using a fragment of a newspaper.

Until then, for me, time had always been something measured, something to be met, something planned: exam hours, class schedules, deadlines. All of these were time imposed upon me. But in that project, for the first time, I realized that time could be felt, interpreted, even experienced as a personal concept.

As I looked at the newspaper fragment I had chosen, I was not simply reading a news story—I was reading a memory, a past, perhaps a turning point in someone’s life. And in that moment I understood: time is not merely a line moving forward; it deepens as we assign meaning to it.

Perhaps my connection to architecture began precisely here. Because architecture, like time, is not merely something seen—it is something felt, lived, and interpreted.

At the beginning, I asked whether it was possible to mute the voices around me. Perhaps completely silencing them is impossible. But over time, you can amplify your own voice so much that the others become nothing more than background noise.

Looking back today, I can say clearly: If I had spent my life merely chasing what others called “success,” I would likely have lived out someone else’s dream and become a stranger to my own life.

Now I am still searching for my path. I still sometimes doubt. But at least this path is mine.

And now I know: true success is not living a life that everyone applauds, but building a life in which your inner voice is no longer silent—it speaks. Because in the end, what matters is not how “successful” you are, but to whom that success truly belongs.