Tag: Student experience

Sharing your work with others, even your tutors, can feel daunting. We know so many students struggle to submit work for feedback because they worry that it’s not good enough.

Dr Aaliyah Khan, Senior Student Experience Coach, shares her tips and advice on how to overcome that fear.

Whether you are studying architecture, photography, fine art or filmmaking, a lot of students in creative subjects tell us the same thing: they don’t submit their work because they think it’s not ‘good enough.’

If that sounds familiar, you’re definitely not the only one. Many creative students struggle with things like perfectionism, fear of rejection, taking work very personally, or feeling like everyone else is more talented. Some don’t even have the words for it – they just freeze when the deadline gets close.

There is a psychological reason for this – your brain is trying to protect you from some kind of perceived pain; rejection, criticism, judgement, or even the fear of visibility.

BUT not submitting doesn’t protect you at all — it just makes things harder and more painful later on.

Submit Now and Avoid Stress Later

When you skip a submission and wait for the automatic resit:

• You don’t get any feedback to help you improve
• You have less time later, with more pressure and less support from peer or teachers
• You might end up juggling multiple resits at once
• The worry doesn’t go away – it just gets bigger, causing anxiety and stress

Most students who resit say they wish they’d just handed something in the first time. Just imagine how good it will feel to get it out of the way!

Build Your Creative Confidence

Your assignment doesn’t need to be your best-ever work, and not every piece of work has to capture everything you’re capable of as an artist. University is where you practise, experiment, and grow — your career is where you’ll create your masterpieces.

Creative work always feels personal, and it’s normal to worry about how it will be received. But your tutors aren’t looking for perfection – they’re looking for effort and growth. Even a rough draft gives them something to support you with. Feedback is one of the most valuable parts of creative education, as it helps you develop, refine your ideas, and grow your confidence.

And that is the essence of the creative process; Create → Submit → Receive Feedback → Improve → Repeat

Don’t trick yourself by thinking you will submit ‘when I feel more confident’! Your confidence will only come with repeated cycles of the creative process above.

If you’re struggling:

• Submit what you have, even if it feels unfinished (just do it!)
• Ask a tutor or friend to look over it — sometimes a quick chat helps
• Break the task into small pieces so it doesn’t feel overwhelming
• Speak to a Student Experience Coach to overcome your barriers and blocks

You deserve the chance to learn, improve, and get feedback — and that only starts when you submit.

• Dr Aaliyah Khan is a Senior Student Experience Coach. You can book a free one-to-one coaching session via InfoHub.

Sharing your work with others, even your tutors, can feel daunting. We know so many students struggle to submit work for feedback because they worry that it’s not good enough.

BSc (Hons) Architecture alumni Shahd Osama Jabr shares her story of how she transformed her studies once she learnt the value of showing up, submitting her work and getting feedback.

When I started my architecture course, I did not just find it challenging. I found it heavy.

I was an international student living abroad for the first time, adapting to a new culture, new people, and a completely new system. On top of that, I had lost my mum in 2019, and then COVID hit in 2020, so arriving at university felt like stepping into a new life while still carrying everything from the old one.

I also arrived without the inside knowledge that many people seemed to have. Some classmates had family in architecture or already had a strong background. I did not. I did not know how studio culture worked, how to speak to tutors confidently, or even what kind of help I was allowed to ask for. And because the first year is where you learn the basics, you build on them forever. I felt like I was falling behind from day one.

When fear gets quiet, it gets powerful

In the studio, I would look around and think, “Everyone knows what they are doing except me.” I was scared of being judged, for my work, for not having the right vocabulary, for simply not knowing what to do next. I attended weekly, but I missed some lectures. Sometimes I would even be on campus and still not go in, especially if I was five minutes late. The idea of walking through the door while everyone turned their head felt unbearable.

But avoiding class does not protect you. It isolates you. The less I showed up, the less feedback I got. The less feedback I got, the less I understood what to do next. That cycle contributed to me failing my studio module in my first year. Retaking it pushed me to show up more. And that small change helped me pass, but I still carried the same fear and uncertainty.

The turning point: showing up changed what I believed about myself

Things started to shift properly in Studio 2. In the second semester, I was part of a group project and was lucky to be paired with friends. Working with them taught me something I will never forget. Everyone has strengths and gaps. One person was brilliant at sketching, another at model making, and another at digital tools, and we learned from each other by sharing, questioning, and accepting each other’s critiques.

For the first time, the feedback felt normal rather than frightening. After that, I noticed a pattern. The more I showed up, the more feedback I received. The more feedback I received, the clearer the next steps became. And the clearer the next steps were, the easier it was to keep showing up.

By my final year, I made it a mission to show up daily, even on days without studio, sometimes on weekends. It became normal. Being around people working made me feel less alone, and it made it easier to share unfinished work without shame. Our studio started to feel like a family. Some days, we lifted each other up. Other days, we cried on each other’s shoulders from stress. But the consistent thing was this. The more we showed our work, the more it got critiqued, and the more it improved. That consistency is a major reason I earned a high distinction in my final studio.

The moment feedback turned panic into a plan

One moment made all of this feel real. Around April that year, I had about a month left before the portfolio submission. The project itself was there. I had developed the full project in the software. But I still had not translated it into clear portfolio outcomes. I did not have the finished set of drawings and pages that communicate a project. Plans, sections, key diagrams, visuals, and a clear layout that tells the story from concept to proposal.

I remember crying to my dad on the phone because I was so convinced I was going to fail, especially when people around me were talking about resetting. I ran into my tutor by coincidence, told him where I was, and instead of judging me, he sat down with me. We made a list of everything the portfolio needed, put it in priority order, and divided it across the remaining days. I finished on time, not because I suddenly became perfect, but because feedback turned overwhelm into a plan.

You don’t need a perfect start

I graduated with a First-Class degree, and now I am in my first year of the Master of Architecture at UWE Bristol. I am not sharing this because I had it together. I am sharing it because I did not, and I still made it through, because I learned how powerful it is to show up and ask for feedback.

If you are struggling, try this:

• Ask your tutor one question: What’s the next step?
• Sit in the studio for 30 minutes with no pressure to produce. Just listen, observe, and let it become familiar.

It is never too early to ask for feedback, and never too late to start. Even if you show up with something messy or with nothing fully formed, you will still leave with a starting point. Showing up is how uncertainty becomes direction.

View Shahd’s LinkedIn profile
View Shahd’s Professional Portfolio

Sharing your work with others, even your tutors, can feel daunting. We know so many students struggle to submit work for feedback because they worry that it’s not good enough.

BEng (Hons) Architecture and Environmental Engineering alumni Romane Sanchez shares her story of how she has learnt to appreciate and value opportunities to get feedback on her work from others.

I used to cry after architecture reviews. 

Looking back now, after finishing my Architecture and Environmental Engineering degree at UWE, working at Ryder Architecture, doing a Master’s in the Netherlands, and now working at Ryder again as a sustainability consultant, I can see how dramatically my relationship with feedback has changed. But getting here wasn’t straightforward. 

The problem started in my undergrad. Half my courses were engineering—objective, right or wrong, comforting in their certainty. The other half were architecture studio projects where tutors would pick apart my designs with subjective comments that made no sense to me. If the plan worked and the building functioned, surely it was good? I’d walk into reviews convinced my work was finished, only to have it questioned from every angle – it felt unfair. 

Changing my approach

But as the years passed, I started to understand that design is iteration. It’s not about arriving at the “correct” answer—it’s about asking better questions. So I changed how I approached reviews. Instead of defending final proposals, I brought works-in-progress and actual questions. I left space for things to evolve. My final year project went through 16 iterations, and you can literally see where the review sessions happened because that’s when the biggest leaps forward occurred. My tutor Sonja was brilliant at pushing me just far enough without letting me fall apart. 

Then I joined Ryder and realized university reviews were just the warm-up. At work, we have company-wide design exchanges where anyone—and I mean anyone from across the entire practice—can tune in and comment on your project. What I’d seen as a dreaded hurdle at uni was actually a sought-after moment for knowledge-sharing in the real world. Architects actively want this kind of input. 

Clear communication is key for successful collaboration

There were still difficult moments – I remember receiving contradicting feedback from colleagues: I’d take someone’s suggestion, develop it, then have someone else question why I’d gone that direction. This inability to defend iterations that weren’t even fully mine made me realise that the problem wasn’t receiving constructive criticism, I enjoy bouncing ideas, but I am frustrated when I feel misunderstood. It’s on us – the people seeking feedback – to clearly communicate the intention behind decisions and allow reviewers to come with a full picture, thus providing informed and relevant comments.  

My master’s at TU Delft and Wageningen pushed this even further. The programme emphasized co-creation, which implies getting input not just from other designers but from residents, clients, end users—basically anyone with a stake in the project. If you want to create built environments that actually matter to people, you need to invite other voices in and be open to what they say. I followed this collaborative approach throughout my thesis and my supervisors, Birgit and Maryam, along with the professionals I interviewed throughout the process, influenced and ultimately improved the quality of my final outputs. 

Keep an open mind to allow your work to evolve

Overall, this is the essential bit to understand: design is iterative by nature. To make it better and give it real meaning, you have to let it evolve with an open mindset and ear. Your professional life will be full of feedback moments and that is simply a fact. How you handle them is up to you—but remember, everything starts as a first draft.  

• Romane Sanchez graduated with a BEng Architecture and Environmental Engineering from UWE Bristol, before moving on to an MSc Metropolitan Analysis, Design and Engineering at TU Delft and Wageningen.
• She now works as a Sustainability Consultant in Okana (part of Ryder Architecture).