Congrats, Sydney!

Meet Sydney Farris Clark, BRW’s newest architect!

Interestingly enough, Sydney picked architecture out of a hat. Her mom is a graphic designer and has worked in that field for all of Sydney’s life. Sydney got to see what she did and was very interested in learning the Adobe products she was working with. She began applying to graphic design programs and then her mom suggested she try architecture. Sydney was also interested in engineering….but wasn’t so sure about the math portion. So, she applied to UTA and TAMU for architecture and ended up choosing TAMU to gain life experience away from home. Her mom told her that college wasn’t for everyone so if she didn’t end up liking it…she could come home and work for her mom. That gave Sydney the drive to excel. She jumped into the abyss of architecture and LOVED it! Once she dove in, she had no doubts. This is what she was meant to do.

Sydney graduated from TAMU in 2018 and immediately went to University of Michigan for grad school through 2020. She interned every year since sophomore year of undergraduate. She liked to think of herself as a serial interner but enjoyed gaining all the experience. Sydney was looking for one more internship and was referred to Doug. In 2019, she did her final internship at BRW and was given an official offer letter from Doug for a full time position starting after graduation in 2020.

Meanwhile her husband began applying to medical schools all over Texas and got waitlisted to two schools. One of those two was in Houston so Sydney started in that office. And as fate would have it, her husband got accepted to TAMU. BRW offered Sydney the option to work remote for Houston while being in College Station.

Sydney and Mitchell married in 2020, but due to COVID, did not get to take a honeymoon. Now, every vacation is a honeymoon. They have a dog named Zoe who is the cutest pup you’ve ever seen!

She started studying in July or August of 2020 right after she started in the Houston office. Sydney rapidly took her tests with her first in December of 2020 and the last test in December 2021 exactly one year later. She finished her hours needed for licensure just one month before her final exam.

Her advice to others would be to spend time researching the exams before getting started. She found that the practice questions were the most helpful tool for her success. Sydney did 1000 practice questions for each test! Reading and videos were also helpful for her while the flash cards were a bit tough to utilize. Regarding how she took the tests, she did Practice Management then Project Management followed by Construction Evaluation just one week later. Next, she set her eyes towards the three design tests – PA, PPD, PDD. She recommends doing it this way as there is overlap in language and contracts from exam to exam.

All-in-all this has been an adventure to her, and she’s looking forward to her rewarding future as an architect!