CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Zaree Ascan, a senior architecture major at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, said she wouldn’t be where she is today had it not been for her grandfather, Leo.
Her grandfather was an architect and her unexpected decision to pursue architecture instead of going to a medical school was inspired by his legacy.
Although she had to deal with some flak from shocked and worried family members, Zaree's choice to go down a different career path was kismet.
After all, it led to an Illinois success story complete with an impressive list of achievements and opportunities—like studying abroad in Barcelona for a year—that made her college career one to write about.
Making the Switch
All her life Zaree told herself that she was going to a medical school.
With a mom who’s a nurse and a dad who’s a physical therapist, healthcare was always part of the conversation growing up and it seemed like that natural path for her to take.
But when she started filling out college applications her senior year of high school she found herself in an interesting, unexpected predicament—she couldn't honestly say why she wanted to become a doctor.
“In those applications you have to write about why you wanted to pursue the degree you chose or why you wanted to apply to a particular program, and I could not come up with a genuine sentence,” she said, as we shared a little laugh. “Obviously, I wrote things like ‘I want to help people,’ but I could never find the words to explain why (I wanted to do that) in a way that felt true to me.”
So there she was, 3 a.m. on a school night about four years ago, scouring the internet, trying to find a new career that she can confidently write on her college applications, one that she genuinely wanted to do for the rest of her life.
Then, architecture popped up as one of the results. She had never taken any art classes, and she never thought about doing architecture as a career, but she did have a connection to the field that made it feel right—her grandfather.
“I just remembered having so much fun with him building these pillow forts. The one memory that really sticks out to me is when he took one of those door security stoppers (a rod) and put it in my pillow fort so that the canopy would be supported,” Zaree said, beaming. “He also taught me how to draw a lot, even if it was just like stick figures. He used to live with us when I was growing up, so I'd always see all these little floor plans or things he had drawn for fun spread out on the dining table. For example, he imagined this pavilion in our backyard that would surround the tree he planted for me.”
Zaree lit up when she talked about her precious memories with her grandfather. Memories like seeing his own drawings or him looking over the drawings that she would submit to small, children’s art competitions that she always ended up placing in.
Unfortunately, Zaree wasn’t able to tell her grandfather herself that she was considering following in his footsteps. At that time he was bedridden and very ill while staying with family in the Philippines.
And she never did get the chance.
Leo died in September 2021, during Zaree's senior year of high school, just as she was beginning to consider architecture.
“Moon River, Wider than a Mile...”
Zaree had an emotional start to her college career.
Because her decision came as a shock to her family, it wasn’t exactly well-received.
“They were like, ‘What? You were supposed to be our first doctor. What happened to med school?’ ‘Architecture, really? You’ve never considered that,’” she recalled her family saying. “It really hurt to hear that because yeah, I'm good at science, I'm good at math, and I knew people expected me to ‘make the most’ of that, but I didn't think I was going to be happy pursuing a life that revolved around that.”
The initial reaction her family had followed her as she started college and it intensified when folks consistently told her that it wasn't too late to reconsider her major.
She was also mourning her grandfather and she said even though he had passed a year prior, she still felt the weight of not having him fully know or understand her decision to pursue architecture.
Nevertheless, she persevered because she was confident in herself. That confidence was bolstered in the final days of her freshmen year after she received an email notifying her that she had won a departmental award for showing promise in the field as a freshman.
Although she couldn’t call her grandfather to tell him the great news, she explained that in a way he showed her that he was and will always be there for her.
“I took the MTD 22 (bus) to the reception by myself, and after it ended, I headed home alone as well. I had my little plaque in hand, sitting on the bus with my headphones on, and I pressed shuffle on Spotify. The first song that came up was Moon River. I’m not even kidding. I’m not making this up. That was my grandpa’s favorite song,” Zaree said, tears pooling in both our eyes. “He was known for that. He’d always be whistling it, and growing up, that’s all I would hear.”
Zaree explained that from that moment on, she used her grandfather’s memory and the lyrics from the songs he cherished to reassure her not only in the decisions she made, but also during exceptionally difficult times—like in Barcelona.
“When I was really having a tough time with my final project and I was really close to just giving up on the idea, I would put on his music—songs like My Way by Frank Sinatra, Moon River, or Impossible Dream,” Zaree said in a cracked voice as tears quietly dripped down her face. “My grandpa never knew about my major, and I’ll never know for sure if he understood that I wanted to pursue architecture because he might have been too sick to fully grasp it, but I feel like I still hear him through his songs. I hear the words I don't get to hear from my family through his songs.”
And with tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat, I leaned forward, looked at her, and said with all the confidence in the world, “He knows. Trust me, he knows.”
A New Opportunity
Zaree has taken her grandfather’s memory with her through every step and milestone in her college career.
His memory, coupled with support from friends, family, and professors, reminded her that she could overcome any challenge including an intensive study abroad program.
Zaree applied for and was accepted into the Illinois Architecture Study Abroad Program in Barcelona-El Vallès (Illinois at ETSAV). That’s the School of Architecture’s flagship international program of overseas studies.
The Illinois at ETSAV Barcelona Program is a comprehensive international learning experience for students enrolled in the School of Architecture.
She first learned about the program when she was a freshman. A teaching assistant shared stories about his classmates who had completed it and encouraged freshmen to explore the opportunity.
“He said that all his classmates who did the program came back evidently different, especially in their knowledge and perspective with design,” Zaree said. “From then, I always knew I wanted to learn whatever they had learned.”
She applied for the program during the fall semester of her sophomore year and learned of her acceptance in January 2024.
A few months later she got her ticket, packed the essentials (some clothes, her EPI pen, her inhaler, and most importantly her architecture supplies and books), and was on the plane in September 2024. She spent her entire junior year in Barcelona.
“It was great. Before we even got our acceptance letters, my friends and I would joke about how crazy it would be if, a year from then, we could actually be living in Barcelona. And when we finally got there, it was so surreal, especially thinking back to when it was just a dream,” she said.
According to the program’s website, the offering is equivalent to courses students would see on the Illinois campus, and it’s, “academically rigorous, intense, challenging, and broadening as it exposes students firsthand to the architecture of Western Europe.” This held true for Zaree.
She said the overall academic experience was immersive.
For example, she detailed an average school day that started with a history lecture inside a classroom on the university campus in the morning, then in the afternoon her class would travel into the city to visit, walk through, analyze, and sketch the actual sites and places they talked about in their history lecture.
Another example that showed just how immersive the academic experience was took place during a two-week trip to Greece she and her friends took.
“I remember we had two weeks during the first semester to travel anywhere else and submit an analysis at the end of the two weeks detailing the places we visited and other architectural elements,” Zaree said. “A group of friends and I went to Greece and we saw the Acropolis (and other ruins) that we learned about our sophomore year (at Illinois). In that moment, we were actually seeing, in person, what we had only seen in our lecture slides, which was so cool.”
Personal Challenges, Personal Triumphs, and a Library
The program promised students a, "wealth of opportunities for professional and personal growth for students,” which is exactly what happened to Zaree. However, her personal and professional growth didn’t come easy.
Despite breath-taking moments and exciting adventures to see places she had only ever seen in a textbook, Zaree also faced challenges that stemmed beyond a language barrier—challenges like self-doubt.
Zaree explained that during her first semester abroad, she felt behind in different areas, like sketching designs, and that marked the first time she really doubted her abilities. She said she felt like she had a skill gap, but she told herself that a skill gap wasn’t permanent and decided to ask for help.
She reached out to her professors and asked for feedback, guidance and advice, and she sought resources to help with her drawing skills.
“The chance to push myself more in an environment I wasn't comfortable in... I think that really helped me become more self-assured,” she added.
Zaree’s real challenge with replacing self-doubt with strength and perseverance came in her second semester that year and took shape as a library.
It was her last semester and her final project tasked her with creating a library that would, hypothetically, be built in Barcelona. The design had to be realistic. She had to assume real dimensions and logistics like structural layouts and types of construction materials that typically would be used to create an actual building.
“For some reason, every time I made a design concept, I kept coming back to the same idea for the roof. I wanted the roof on my library to sweep around like a Figure 8 or a swirl,” Zaree said. “My professors were honest with me about the challenges of making that work. One said it would be difficult and encouraged me to think my decision through carefully. ‘It could work,’ another professor told me, ‘but you’re going to have to push through because it is more complex and your final project might not be as developed as your peers if you go this route.’”
Zaree explained that the reason her professors were so direct with her was because conventional shapes are more straightforward to execute.
Her roof design, with its sweeping, swirling form, included more complicated elements, which required extra planning and problem-solving and made the process of bringing the building to life much harder.
“First, how are you going to do that design through software? Second, how are you going to make a handmade model? This project was where some of my self-doubt was really strong,” Zaree said. “In class, everyone shows their progress to the professor in small groups, and you see what others are working on, and, again, these are smart people and great designers…I could see they were making so much progress every studio session. And all I kept hearing was, ‘This isn’t working, you need to think this through, something is missing from your design.’ It felt like I kept hitting a brick wall.”
But just as she did when she first embarked on her architecture journey two years earlier, she persevered.
She stuck with her design, and she made it work regardless of people saying it wouldn’t. When the day of final presentations came, she was met with a satisfying finale—the reviewers loved her project.
“When I presented my boards with my technical drawings, I wasn’t sure what to expect,” Zaree shared. “I had spent so much time trying to make the curvy, sweeping, ribbon-like roof on my physical model that I didn’t have time to refine the board visually, but the reviewers didn’t say anything about it. They were more amazed with the boldness of the concept and how I was able to pull it off.”
In fact, she said one of the reviewers approached her during a brief coffee and cookie break after the presentations and told her that they loved the project, noting that it reminded them of a Bjarke Ingels design. (Ingels is a famous architect from Copenhagen.)
At the end of her last semester, during a small get-together to say goodbye to her professors, Zaree thanked the studio professor who encouraged her throughout the project.
“She told me my project could work and always believed in me, urging me to push through,” Zaree said. “After I thanked her, she said, ‘I told you, if you have an idea, you have to fight for it. You can’t back down.’ I think that conversation with her will stick with me for the rest of my career and the rest of my life honestly. It was really meaningful to hear.”
Parting Words
Reflecting on her experience, Zaree said one piece of advice she could give to other students is to talk to advisors, talk to professors, and to talk to peers because that’s the best way to learn about any program.
“Ask what they know about a program and figure out what you need to plan for like completing requirements, staying on track with your courses, and making sure you can fit everything in before and after your time abroad,” she advised. “Start looking into it as early as freshman year so you have enough time to plan and complete the classes you need.”
On a more personal note, she recommends that other students interested in studying abroad should learn to be uncomfortable.
“Don’t be afraid to be uncomfortable. You’ll only grow if you tackle challenges head-on instead of giving in or just accepting things as they are,” she said. “Even if you don’t know what direction to take, you just have to do something. Take one step, talk to a friend, talk to a professor, ask a question, send an e-mail, go to the library, see what you can find. You don't have to have it all figured out in one night. Chipping away at the problem you’re facing is all it really takes.”
Analicia Haynes is the storytelling and social media specialist. She can be reached at ahayn2@illinois.edu.