In my fifth year of architecture school, in the midst of completing my year long thesis, I came to realize that a big part of this research experience was learning to handle my multiple advisors. Design was important, but without proper organizational skills, and management skills I couldn't build the proper foundations to design upon. I made decisions on how to organize my limited time with my advisors and how to maximize their criticism. This realization returned to me in my first full time job, working under a time pressed principal that didn't have time to deal with the details, he wanted progress. The architectural internship had to provide me with a variety of experiences to make informed decisions.

Upon entering the working force, I joined a rather large architecture office, employing around 160 employees. This was a big change from academia as well as my summer and winter college internship with a much smaller firm, of about 20 people. At my new firm I found it quite a challenge to be able to get a hold of the decision makers due to the complexity of a large office. Through my frustrations of not being able to get a hold my design principal, I began to realize that I needed to make day-to-day decisions to move forward.

A few months after working at my new job, I was asked to join the graphics department of the office to work on both graphic design as well as architectural graphics. This position provided a wide diversity of new challenges and experiences. I found that certain projects provided much more creative freedom then I had experienced prior to joining the graphics department, as well more project management. These new challenges and experiences brought more required decision-making, with even less interaction from the office's control structure. The diversity of project types, and sizes provided an array of experiences to further my career as an architect.

Today, in my current job I find that the control structure is different then my last job as well as my college experience. The small size of the office, and the hierarchy of control lends the employees to have substantially more project responsibility. I quickly learned this upon completing a slew of self guided tasks I believed were required before my design principal requested that same list of tasks. Without the variety of experiences that I acquired over the last few years, I don't know if I would have gained the confidence to make informed decisions to further my career as an architect. I am finding that this skill is just as important to architectural internship as fulfilling my required hours as set by the intern development program.