"All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality."
Martin Luther King Jr.

Like and experienced mom in denial of the inevitability of adolescent defiance, I am at the tail end of my internship still holding firmly onto an idealistic view of what that internship should be. It should be more than just "a student or a recent graduate undergoing supervised practical training." It should be a special pass to the professional Architect's inside world. More than just clocking in hours on a training unit log workbook, it should be captured moments of opportunity that expand in every direction. Instead of an abrupt descent into the protected world of professional egotism, it should be a submissive ascent into knowledge where the experienced protagonist leads. Internship should be a time of mentoring and apprenticeship, which to the Architect, should be like a set of rare coins in the collector's hand; mutual, valuable and valued.

In our society today, however, concepts intrinsic to internship, like selflessness and camaraderie, are unnatural and undesirable. Corporate leaders are stealing to get more for themselves, Parishioners are abandoning worship for self-directed lives, and the entertainment industry's gift of titillation to us, is in fact a self-directed endowment. Apprenticeship now is characterize by a group of already experienced, high income earning adults vying for a job that awards a half a million dollar salary and a new car. And, no matter how deeply it hurts, equality has yet to be realized; the heart of man still sees color, race and religion, still judges by the size of your house, the green of your lawn and the make and model of your car.

If I could, I would change the world; the nature of man and the structure of society, its virtues and its values. These new mores would then transform Architecture, and subsequently internship. However, I am not all-powerful and we shall never live in an ideal world. Notwithstanding, the power to transform one life at a time is still available to us. One way to do this, I contend, would be to mandate that interns and professionals get theoretical and practical training in ethics and diversity. We should not mandate mentoring, like forcing friendship, but we can mandate education and insure exposure to other's more humbling circumstances, so to foster an overall giving environment.

With everything we get, in everything we learn and in all that we know there was someone who gave to make it possible; an author, a teacher, a friend or a foe, a stranger, a foundation, a grandparent or even a child. So, given that truth, is it not imperative that we continue to give for our society, our environment, and even for Architecture to survive and to thrive?