Moments of March 🌻

hey guys, welcome to Scaling Up with Sana! ⭐ This is a simple, recap of my thoughts, media I’ve enjoyed and a couple of self-development tips I’ve learnt throughout the month🪴

If you’re new here, it’s lovely to have you! My name is Sana, I’m an MArch student in London, creator of :scale blog and advocate for healthy habits for architecture students ✌🏻

I was really looking forward to March in an attempt to be over with February. But funnily enough it’s gone by so quickly. I didn’t have a particular focus for this month, but looking back now, it was probably to just be patient with myself. It’s funny because I sometimes feel like people think it’s pretty easy to balance both being a student and a hobby that takes up a lot of time. I think most of my focus has simply been towards my work at the moment. Probably because I’ve been working on an upcoming deadline and somehow all the days have blurred into each other. After a series of early mornings and late nights, I’m looking forward to being on the other side of it all.

This month I came across a blog post called ‘Do the Real Thing’ by Scott Young. Basically it was trying to get across the point that instead of faffing around with unnecessary tasks or stuff on your list you ‘think’ you need to do, you should just put all your focus into the one thing you know you need to do. It’s kind of like going the extra mile or taking the bumpy road in favour of a more fulfilling learning path.

I especially like this part:

If you want a bit of a longer read, I quite enjoyed this article that resurfaced from my Notion database of essay references.

You might be thinking, how or why is this tweet relevant at all? But actually, I saved it for just the last few lines. The words ‘Season of Struggle’ sound like a really great way to describe this month for me.

Albeit it’s gone by very very quickly, there were a lot of ups and downs and I found myself almost burnt out with ‘creating content’ which I knew I didn’t want happening but prepared myself for anyway. It wasn’t a surge of added pressure or anything, more so the fact that I just don’t have the time because I want to push all my energy into this uni deadline. And rightly so I think. 

I could talk about being productive, finding tips to be motivated and testing out new routines but it wouldn’t mean a thing if I wasn’t truthful about the situation which I’m sure many students right now are going through. As deadlines loom over our heads over the next few weeks, we can find ourselves almost bored with the work ahead of us. But I’m hoping that with each new week, there’s always something new to look forward to.

But reading that last line from the tweet; ‘Grow through it & become who you know you can be’ is an interesting one. Talking about how quickly this past month has gone has also made me reflect how fast the academic year is going by. But I suppose we have to enjoy every moment, regardless of the struggle and simply, grow through it.

If you haven’t noticed already, this newsletter is bascially a week late. Honestly it’s been such a long few weeks with this huge deadline and I’ve basically been able to spend a good few days just doing absolutely nothing. But hopefully this little rest and recharge will be just what I need to get back into more of a ‘normal’ routine.

I’ve been trying to appreciate the experiences I’ve had this month, pushing to get out of my comfort zone with the help of those around me, making sure that I prioritise but also enjoy the work I’m doing and just letting go of things that don’t need so much attention. There are some exciting things coming up in April and I just hope it’s a great month for everyone! 🤞🏻✨

I’ve been working on a special project the past few months - a clothing collection for creatives and designers in collaboration with my buddy Dan who’s also an MArch student (check out his podcast here). ctrl+s is a studiowear capsule campaign which will be launching very soon and I’d love if you supported it by following us on Instagram 😊

As always, if you’d like to have a chat or suggest something just hit reply 😉