Inherent in the two questions posed to potential conference participants, is the premise that within internship's current structure, there is still a great deal of room for improvement. Simply put, internship needs a tune up. The tough questions that have been asked for more than a decade now are: what is broken, and who should fix it?

For me these questions are particularly interesting at this stage in my professional career, because I am not currently engaged in traditional practice. After a decade spent working in offices, I now write about design. Nevertheless, with a bit of hindsight, I am more objective about the whole process of internship. In actuality it is not the mechanics of internship that need much adjustment, but rather it is the profession's attitude toward internship that needs the full overhaul. Internship speaks to the transition to adulthood and the new responsibilities associated with participating in society and working environments.

The studio method is one of the most extraordinary models of learning and exchange of ideas, where the interchange between students is equally as important as that of student and teacher. From a desk crit to the formal review process, student and teacher roles are often reversed in the larger context of design discussions. However, upon entering the workplace, there is a new hierarchy of authority young professionals must adjust to - who is in control and who is not. Somehow there must be a way of reconciling the need to run an architectural practice as a viable business while keeping the academic/studio nature of our schooling involved in our work life.

As young professionals try to juggle the demands of personal and professional lives, remove the stigma associated with those who want to get involved in the profession beyond the extents of their day-to-day work. Of course, in the middle of it all, individuals want to stay focused, get the work done, and through the process. But if interns felt the support of their offices, or at least more of it, it would ease this burden.

To date, discussion about internship has centered on the intern's responsibilities - what must young professionals do to ensure the transition to the workplace. To some extent schools have been held accountable in this process, but the transition does not end there. What can practitioners do to implement a better internship experience in everyday practice? Engage offices, hold them accountable in this next stage of professional transition, and provide them the resources to perform these tasks.

Five hundred words are hardly enough time or space to discuss this topic, and the ideas expressed above are only a start. One of the tasks in continuing the discussion about internship is how do you make everyone care about these issues, and make them understand that even when an individual has moved beyond this stage of their professional development, it is still an issue that affects them. The 2005 Internship Conference will be another step toward finding answers.