Some days I feel like a pinball ball. I'm rolling slowly downhill, and then ping! I get shot towards something. It's exciting. I'm excited. I got an email back from the firm in Switzerland a couple weeks back. The email came from the Principal at the firm. I liked the speed. And then it slowed. No new news from the dude from Switzerland. In fact, he said they'd make a decision by the end of August. It's September 4th. I am rolling pretty slowly now. I've fallen into one of those holes that holds you motionless for a second. You know you'll pop out, you're just not sure when so you're ready. Don't be impatient, I remind myself. So I sit anticipating the pop.
I went back to my "Progress Table" today - a table in which I record all the places I've applied to, people I've spoken to and the follow-up I need to do. I revisited jobs I'd applied for, searched Avue, the government website and spent two hours answering the typical questions that don't really define who you are or how you'd be an asset to the company or right for the job - rather questions confined to boxes that you must check or leave blank, a binary system that makes you eligible or not. Apparently there are landscape architecture positions available in the United States ("locations nationwide") with no closing date and oxymoronic general specifics. Anyone interested?
Friday, September 4, 2009
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Go big or stay unemployed.
I’ve had some luck in the last week. By luck I mean that my search does not feel stagnant. It’s not truckin’ along admittedly. It hasn’t resulted in any big job offers. But I’ve revised what I expect. I think we all must do this, to keep our optimism up.
I found an angel. Her name is Kelly Simpson and she lives somewhere north of Spokane in Canada. She says she has really neat handwriting (to which she attributes most of her job-winning success), won an ASLA Student Award years back, was recruited by Design Workshop and now has decided she’d rather live in a small Canadian town with a ski mountain nearby and become a nurse. But she was quick to say that she didn’t want to dissuade me from following my own path into landscape architecture – she just realized landscape architecture didn’t fit into her recipe for balance and lifestyle. And THIS is why I love her. Kelly searches for balance in life which resonates with me. Last spring a Denver landscape architect came to speak at the University of Arizona. His firm seemed to be right up my alley – a smallish firm that pursued interesting urban, public projects. How should I position myself to work for a firm like his, I wondered? He suggested to some of us eager students over breakfast at the Arizona Inn that we search for positions with the big gun firms because doing our duty in cubicles and basements with AutoCAD for a while would set us on the track for bigger and better jobs fueled by big-name experience…. I took in a big breath filled with excitement over a fresh career ahead of me that may begin with a job that may include relationships with people who call me “the CAD-bunny”. Kelly reiterated this. She said that many of the smaller firms will scoop you up because they want to know the tricks you learned at Design Workshop or Sasaki or wherever. Plus, you’ve already made it through their fine grained filter and all of this makes you a more desirable future employee. A job like this would be alright for a while, I rationalized. I still believe this. I’m still willing to do that. But I do need to hear that after gaining a bit of experience, I will have more of an ability to shape the way my work and life will interact. Kelly said that sometimes, simply having good people around you to work with and supervisors who care about you personally as well as professionally, makes any office setting fulfilling.
Later that week I met with Doug Allan, the Associate Dean of the College of Architecture and Planning at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. My dad worked with him in the 1980s and said he ‘is a real nice guy’. He is. He is also a landscape architect by trade who has been teaching for the past 30+ years. Doug also talked about the “big firms”. He pulled out an engineering weekly newspaper. The topic this week explored how the big firms, and by “big” I mean, multi-national, gargantuan, could-take-over-a-small-country “big”, survived in this economy. Doug, a southerner to the bone, talked with excitement over projects that designed towns of 500,000. In some cases, he said, “it’s like the dogs who caught the car” (they take on more than they know what to do with) and in others the process is so nested and so long that it becomes rote, “like eatin’ eeegggs for five years” (you get tired of eggs). But right now, it’s successful and keeps firms above water. On my list of firms to check out I’ve added: HOK, CH2M Hill, Perkins and Will and Dar-Al-Handaseh/Shair & Partners.
I found an angel. Her name is Kelly Simpson and she lives somewhere north of Spokane in Canada. She says she has really neat handwriting (to which she attributes most of her job-winning success), won an ASLA Student Award years back, was recruited by Design Workshop and now has decided she’d rather live in a small Canadian town with a ski mountain nearby and become a nurse. But she was quick to say that she didn’t want to dissuade me from following my own path into landscape architecture – she just realized landscape architecture didn’t fit into her recipe for balance and lifestyle. And THIS is why I love her. Kelly searches for balance in life which resonates with me. Last spring a Denver landscape architect came to speak at the University of Arizona. His firm seemed to be right up my alley – a smallish firm that pursued interesting urban, public projects. How should I position myself to work for a firm like his, I wondered? He suggested to some of us eager students over breakfast at the Arizona Inn that we search for positions with the big gun firms because doing our duty in cubicles and basements with AutoCAD for a while would set us on the track for bigger and better jobs fueled by big-name experience…. I took in a big breath filled with excitement over a fresh career ahead of me that may begin with a job that may include relationships with people who call me “the CAD-bunny”. Kelly reiterated this. She said that many of the smaller firms will scoop you up because they want to know the tricks you learned at Design Workshop or Sasaki or wherever. Plus, you’ve already made it through their fine grained filter and all of this makes you a more desirable future employee. A job like this would be alright for a while, I rationalized. I still believe this. I’m still willing to do that. But I do need to hear that after gaining a bit of experience, I will have more of an ability to shape the way my work and life will interact. Kelly said that sometimes, simply having good people around you to work with and supervisors who care about you personally as well as professionally, makes any office setting fulfilling.
Later that week I met with Doug Allan, the Associate Dean of the College of Architecture and Planning at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. My dad worked with him in the 1980s and said he ‘is a real nice guy’. He is. He is also a landscape architect by trade who has been teaching for the past 30+ years. Doug also talked about the “big firms”. He pulled out an engineering weekly newspaper. The topic this week explored how the big firms, and by “big” I mean, multi-national, gargantuan, could-take-over-a-small-country “big”, survived in this economy. Doug, a southerner to the bone, talked with excitement over projects that designed towns of 500,000. In some cases, he said, “it’s like the dogs who caught the car” (they take on more than they know what to do with) and in others the process is so nested and so long that it becomes rote, “like eatin’ eeegggs for five years” (you get tired of eggs). But right now, it’s successful and keeps firms above water. On my list of firms to check out I’ve added: HOK, CH2M Hill, Perkins and Will and Dar-Al-Handaseh/Shair & Partners.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
The Bean or Bust
August 16, 2009
I really want to go to the ASLA Conference in Chicago. I really do. It’s in less than a month. I check ticket prices daily. Chicago is a city that I have heard so much about with a Mayor that seems to care about green infrastructure. The seminars and field sessions are right up my alley. There’s one that directly applies to a project I am working on here – "day-lighting" a wash (restoring a seasonal river that has been filled in).
But I really can’t afford it. It would not be financially responsible for me to go (buying a latte is financially irresponsible these days). I am no longer a student, not quite a professional but there is not an entrance fee category for this liminal category. I rationalize that I may meet that one potential employer who thinks I would be perfect for their firm, sweep me off my feet and wisk me away to work on innovative projects around the world. Or I could blow $1000 in a weekend on my credit card and come home with a couple of wonky photos of my making faces into the big silver bean at Millennium Park (and by “home” I mean, come back to Tucson to live on the porch of friends). Professionals (and my dad) think that it may be worth taking a chance on the conference. However they are securely in a job and the risk seems romantic. “Jump Indiana! You can make it!” Others, including my mother remind me that my health insurance just ran out yesterday and the student loan grace period ends in two months. “The ants are devouring every piece of flesh off of her body. Darn her luck”.
It’s an interesting spot we find ourselves in – not quite a student, not yet a professional. It means that since we didn’t get fired, we can’t really collect unemployment (not I would like to. Simply another example of how sticky my cohort’s situation really is). It means that many of us are taking volunteer positions to keep our skills as sharp as we can, which leaves less time for earning money at coffee shop and restaurant jobs.
I want to go the ASLA Conference because the sessions will give us “professional development hours” for accreditation and keep us engaged in the innovations of the field. But perhaps most important, I want to go to the conference because “A Hands on Approach to Ecological Restoration and Sustainable Landscapes” would be perfect training for the wash “day-lighting” project I am currently volunteering my time on. “Gutters to Green: Innovative Water Harvesting” will talk about techniques that I have just stumbled through at my own house (did I do it right? How can I make it better?). “Post-Disaster Cedar Rapids: Rebuilding Society, Economy and Environment” looks like it will combine my past professional life (in international development and community building) with my hoped-for-future professional life as a landscape architect.
This conference has the potential to inspire and right now, darn it, we all could use some inspiration. I mean, the conference is titled “Regenerating Places and People”.
I really want to go to the ASLA Conference in Chicago. I really do. It’s in less than a month. I check ticket prices daily. Chicago is a city that I have heard so much about with a Mayor that seems to care about green infrastructure. The seminars and field sessions are right up my alley. There’s one that directly applies to a project I am working on here – "day-lighting" a wash (restoring a seasonal river that has been filled in).
But I really can’t afford it. It would not be financially responsible for me to go (buying a latte is financially irresponsible these days). I am no longer a student, not quite a professional but there is not an entrance fee category for this liminal category. I rationalize that I may meet that one potential employer who thinks I would be perfect for their firm, sweep me off my feet and wisk me away to work on innovative projects around the world. Or I could blow $1000 in a weekend on my credit card and come home with a couple of wonky photos of my making faces into the big silver bean at Millennium Park (and by “home” I mean, come back to Tucson to live on the porch of friends). Professionals (and my dad) think that it may be worth taking a chance on the conference. However they are securely in a job and the risk seems romantic. “Jump Indiana! You can make it!” Others, including my mother remind me that my health insurance just ran out yesterday and the student loan grace period ends in two months. “The ants are devouring every piece of flesh off of her body. Darn her luck”.
It’s an interesting spot we find ourselves in – not quite a student, not yet a professional. It means that since we didn’t get fired, we can’t really collect unemployment (not I would like to. Simply another example of how sticky my cohort’s situation really is). It means that many of us are taking volunteer positions to keep our skills as sharp as we can, which leaves less time for earning money at coffee shop and restaurant jobs.
I want to go the ASLA Conference because the sessions will give us “professional development hours” for accreditation and keep us engaged in the innovations of the field. But perhaps most important, I want to go to the conference because “A Hands on Approach to Ecological Restoration and Sustainable Landscapes” would be perfect training for the wash “day-lighting” project I am currently volunteering my time on. “Gutters to Green: Innovative Water Harvesting” will talk about techniques that I have just stumbled through at my own house (did I do it right? How can I make it better?). “Post-Disaster Cedar Rapids: Rebuilding Society, Economy and Environment” looks like it will combine my past professional life (in international development and community building) with my hoped-for-future professional life as a landscape architect.
This conference has the potential to inspire and right now, darn it, we all could use some inspiration. I mean, the conference is titled “Regenerating Places and People”.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Room with a View
Back in the day (three years ago), the job hunt began by searching job-listing sites and firms for open positions (which existed) and lobbying for them by sending out your portfolio, calling the firm, inquiring about projects, what they need and how your skills fit (it was a two-way street back then). When a firm was interested in hiring you (had made an offer), you were often flown to out to interview. Maybe you had to foot that bill yourself but with the prospect of a salary down the road, and at the very least a nice lunch or coffee on the firm, it seemed like the future was bright and health insurance was on the horizon.
Yesterday, as it began to hail on Highway 15 heading north, I searched for a place with wi-fi so I could check on the 15 or so firms that I’d sent inquiries to in the last month. I knew that none of them had positions but I have made a checklist of all my potential employers (they all have said they envision openings in six months or so) and am religiously touching base with them, flirting with being annoying, sitting on the knife edge of persistent/obnoxious, hoping that the moment a position opens they think of me. This means that in
My dad called the other night and ran down the list of opportunities and firms with whom I’ve been corresponding.
HIM: “How about VWA?”
ME: “They aren’t making decisions until the end of August”.
HIM: “How about the Fulbright?”
ME: “They won’t know until the end of September”.
HIM: “How about the fancy-firm-in-Boston?”
ME: “Even though I had a great conversation with the principal about the big, new project they are starting, I haven’t gotten even an iota of response since”.
I appreciate that my dad is engaged with this process. I’m not annoyed by having to report my rejections, whine about my dwindling savings account or revise my strategy on simply keeping my head above water (maybe being a CAD-monkey wouldn’t be so bad… maybe getting part-time work with the retail shop I worked at in college would be a way to get by… oh, they’re not hiring either? Maybe I’ll put my name in with a temp agency”. My dad’s supportive of whatever I choose and as I drive around the West. When I almost ran out of gas in southern
“What’s that noise Rach?”, he asks as I stand and pace the top of a picnic table set up on my friend Mark’s front porch. I’m camped in Mark’s living room for a couple days. Mark works for the Parks Service in
“You should tell fancy-Boston-principal that life as an unemployed landscape architect isn’t so bad right now. You’ve got ‘neighborhood bison’ in your front yard”.
My dad is right. In fact, as I write this, I’m sitting in the front room of generous family friends Kim and Al. They built a straw bale house in the mountains around 
as I drank coffee and contemplated the job hunt strategy for the day. I am going to contact the Forest Service, I’ve decided. There are a handful of temporary job openings around the country and Vic Lyons (Forest Service dude in the Tahoe basin) said it makes all the difference to find out WHO is responsible for filling those positions and getting in touch with them. So that’s what I’ll do. Then I’ll go for a trail run.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
from Tucson to Tahoe
Tucson, Arizona
Dick Williams is 90-something years old and still writing books, documenting over 50 years of professional experience as an architect, landscape architect and teacher (among many other things I’m sure). He had us (my design partner and I) over for drinks (something involving soda water, vodka and orange flavored Metamucil I think) a couple weeks ago as school ended in Tucson. Carol and I had won a design competition that he sponsored and he wanted to talk to us about our aspirations and future. Partly because he is a bit deaf and partly because he really enjoyed bestowing his own advice upon us, we listened to Dick’s forecast of the profession. Dick said that he too graduated during a recession, the Great Depression (we haven’t yet reached the “capital” D or gained a “Great” like the Great Wall or New Zealand’s Great Walks) and he thought this was a good thing. In my anticipation of being done with school and the responsibilities of life (credit card payments without student loans, a mortgage, eating three meals a day without an income) not yet sinking in fully, I had also formulated why this recession seemed to be good for us. Dick’s reiteration was comforting. The recession is forcing us to live more modestly, think about the essentials in life, refocus on what really matters, be less consumptive which trickles down to destroying less of our natural spaces, throwing less away and driving less. It means (more concretely for our profession) that the focus of projects will shift heavily away from private projects (ie: “new community projects”, a euphemism for “big subdivision sprawl”) to public projects and infill projects. Even though my only job prospect at the time was to keep my bartending job at the Rialto Theatre, the fact that Dick has a beautiful house in a classy neighborhood in Tucson made me think long-term poverty wasn’t going to befall me. I mean, he weathered the Great Depression and this was still just a little “r” recession.
I packed my truck about two weeks later, rented out my room to cover most of my mortgage and headed north to spend the summer visiting friends and firms, without huge expectations and luckily without any responsibilities except myself to sustain. I sold most of my clothes, packed away some in bins and felt even a bit lucky that I wasn’t choosing between many labor hungry firms throwing cushy salaries at me. This was a time to travel and look leisurely at places, firms and organizations. I took my computer, an electronic version of my portfolio, my resume and writing samples.
Lake Tahoe, CA
As I jump back into a job search again (I have to take it in spurts or risk getting totally jaded) and just thought i'd give ASLA's joblink a gander. I entered what i thought were loose search terms. "landscape architect", "entry level", ANY state. "Sorry, no records found".
Hmmm... boys and girls, I think we are up sh*# creek without a paddle. I mean, we are going to have to really get creative on this hunt. I am thinking of starting my own greeting card business with "hope your job search goes well" or "sympathy on your unemployment" or the rare but jubilant "congratulations on getting a job!" focus. My "to do" list includes regions to explore (exciting) and bills and real-world tasks to stay on top of (not so exciting), and writing this blog which has become the highlight of my job search. I'm just afraid that no one wants to hear me rant or sling sarcastic comments about consistent rejection. I did get some encouraging advice from Issac, a construction worker in NM who said that a job agency in Taos is looking for servers and hospitality (read: toilet bowl cleaners) at the ski resort for the winter. He said it with such sincerity for my well being that I had to seem interested for his sake. So with those prospects my strategy is to look not to MAKING money but saving it. A friend from grad school is moving into my house. I moved into my car. My car moved to Tahoe, soon to Montana. I eat PB and J for 2 of three meals.
I'm trying to think of other ways to capitalize on the "recession" a la the Great Depression. Maybe I can take forlorn photos of myself like Dorthea Lange did of DustBowl farmers. I need some children...
Naw... see, the sarcasm is getting the better of me. I just got off the Selway and Payette Rivers in ID and am hanging out with a friend in Tahoe (not a shabby place to be sipping coffee and job searching). I do miss the monsoons and friends in Tucson, though.
Sacramento, CA
Tahoe was 75 degrees. Highway 50 to Sacramento was glutted with heading-home Bay area tourists. Sacramento was 98. My AC makes my car overheat so I turned it on while going downhill, off while going uphill or in traffic. I changed from my longish sleeve black “interview top” which was quickly getting sweaty, into a tank top at a traffic light in Placerville. I changed back while ducking behind my car door at the EDAW parking lot. Lesson 1: If presentation matters (which everyone says it does), don’t interview in the summer in hot California valley towns. I looked like I had just gone for a run.
J.Z. is a senior LA at EDAW-Sacramento. He invited me down to review my portfolio and talk job-acquisition-strategy. I was appreciative since he too said, yup, they aren’t hiring. In fact, they have consolidated their staff. But he believes that the downturn will only last a couple more months. Then they will be hiring.
He liked my portfolio. He talked about the niche that he heads in the company – landscape restoration and recreation projects. EDAW is a big place. It had three secretaries and most folks sat in cubicles. But John was down to earth as were the other LAs I met. The restoration projects posted on the wall were interesting and I felt like this was an arena I knew little about but was excited at the prospect of learning. The planning studio, run by another man, did urban design projects (more familiar to me). The California transit line that will eventually connect northern and southern CA (neat), some high profile public plaza spaces, a new city in Vietnam which looked like a modern, gridded Versaille in plan (who knows what the landscape originally looked like. I imagined Vietnamese rice paddies, square in shape but essentially a productive wetland… and sadly the man who was working on it said he’d never been to Vietnam but had heard about it from his boss). My five minute exposure to the project surely does not allow me to understand it fully. I am woo-ed, I admit, by the travel opportunities, the cool perspectives of high rises and French curve green spaces and an Asian aesthetic crispness and willingness to go big or go home… and yet it sent a shiver down my spine. It made me wonder if, for the sake of a being employed and making my mortgage, I’d take a job that asked me to plat out cul-de-sacs in the desert or grid a wetland (with environmental rationalization of course. But it’s this rationalization I find dangerous). I’ve been told over and over that these types of projects are the bread and butter of many firms. We can’t all work on public greenway projects. But I have a mortgage (did I mention that yet?)
Only a week in California and ALL my job prospects were ones that I heard about through connections I had made through friends and friends of friends. Lesson - make ANY connection possible. GO in. MEET. MAKE an impression. GIVE them something to remember you by (something that makes you distinctive). KEEP in touch afterwards.
I changed back into my tank top at a gas station next to I-80 and headed north towards Idaho. Boise seems like a cool town.
Dick Williams is 90-something years old and still writing books, documenting over 50 years of professional experience as an architect, landscape architect and teacher (among many other things I’m sure). He had us (my design partner and I) over for drinks (something involving soda water, vodka and orange flavored Metamucil I think) a couple weeks ago as school ended in Tucson. Carol and I had won a design competition that he sponsored and he wanted to talk to us about our aspirations and future. Partly because he is a bit deaf and partly because he really enjoyed bestowing his own advice upon us, we listened to Dick’s forecast of the profession. Dick said that he too graduated during a recession, the Great Depression (we haven’t yet reached the “capital” D or gained a “Great” like the Great Wall or New Zealand’s Great Walks) and he thought this was a good thing. In my anticipation of being done with school and the responsibilities of life (credit card payments without student loans, a mortgage, eating three meals a day without an income) not yet sinking in fully, I had also formulated why this recession seemed to be good for us. Dick’s reiteration was comforting. The recession is forcing us to live more modestly, think about the essentials in life, refocus on what really matters, be less consumptive which trickles down to destroying less of our natural spaces, throwing less away and driving less. It means (more concretely for our profession) that the focus of projects will shift heavily away from private projects (ie: “new community projects”, a euphemism for “big subdivision sprawl”) to public projects and infill projects. Even though my only job prospect at the time was to keep my bartending job at the Rialto Theatre, the fact that Dick has a beautiful house in a classy neighborhood in Tucson made me think long-term poverty wasn’t going to befall me. I mean, he weathered the Great Depression and this was still just a little “r” recession.
I packed my truck about two weeks later, rented out my room to cover most of my mortgage and headed north to spend the summer visiting friends and firms, without huge expectations and luckily without any responsibilities except myself to sustain. I sold most of my clothes, packed away some in bins and felt even a bit lucky that I wasn’t choosing between many labor hungry firms throwing cushy salaries at me. This was a time to travel and look leisurely at places, firms and organizations. I took my computer, an electronic version of my portfolio, my resume and writing samples.
Lake Tahoe, CA
As I jump back into a job search again (I have to take it in spurts or risk getting totally jaded) and just thought i'd give ASLA's joblink a gander. I entered what i thought were loose search terms. "landscape architect", "entry level", ANY state. "Sorry, no records found".
Hmmm... boys and girls, I think we are up sh*# creek without a paddle. I mean, we are going to have to really get creative on this hunt. I am thinking of starting my own greeting card business with "hope your job search goes well" or "sympathy on your unemployment" or the rare but jubilant "congratulations on getting a job!" focus. My "to do" list includes regions to explore (exciting) and bills and real-world tasks to stay on top of (not so exciting), and writing this blog which has become the highlight of my job search. I'm just afraid that no one wants to hear me rant or sling sarcastic comments about consistent rejection. I did get some encouraging advice from Issac, a construction worker in NM who said that a job agency in Taos is looking for servers and hospitality (read: toilet bowl cleaners) at the ski resort for the winter. He said it with such sincerity for my well being that I had to seem interested for his sake. So with those prospects my strategy is to look not to MAKING money but saving it. A friend from grad school is moving into my house. I moved into my car. My car moved to Tahoe, soon to Montana. I eat PB and J for 2 of three meals.
I'm trying to think of other ways to capitalize on the "recession" a la the Great Depression. Maybe I can take forlorn photos of myself like Dorthea Lange did of DustBowl farmers. I need some children...
Naw... see, the sarcasm is getting the better of me. I just got off the Selway and Payette Rivers in ID and am hanging out with a friend in Tahoe (not a shabby place to be sipping coffee and job searching). I do miss the monsoons and friends in Tucson, though.
The Forest Service, Tahoe Basin
D.C. (I'm not going to use their names - I am not sure how they'd feel about that) is a cool dude. He wore a California style berret. He likes to mountain bike. He said he started his career in small firms in southern California and then moved to the Forest Service. I had found a Forest Service listing for Tahoe and quickly applied for it. D.C. said, unfortunately the position was a "detail" and thus I wasn't eligible. But, like other LAs who seem genuinely interested in talking to me about strategies to get a job, we talked about the best way to get a foot in the door. He suggested applying for internships. The Forest Service has an internship program called the Career Ladder Internship Program. As our talk moved towards the best mountain bike trails in the area and his new bike I realized how important that personal connection is. There may not be a job now... but when there is, hopefully D.C. will remember what a cool, hip, qualified, motivated person I am. Being just another portfolio on CD on a desk does very little good, it seems.
Sacramento, CA
Tahoe was 75 degrees. Highway 50 to Sacramento was glutted with heading-home Bay area tourists. Sacramento was 98. My AC makes my car overheat so I turned it on while going downhill, off while going uphill or in traffic. I changed from my longish sleeve black “interview top” which was quickly getting sweaty, into a tank top at a traffic light in Placerville. I changed back while ducking behind my car door at the EDAW parking lot. Lesson 1: If presentation matters (which everyone says it does), don’t interview in the summer in hot California valley towns. I looked like I had just gone for a run.
J.Z. is a senior LA at EDAW-Sacramento. He invited me down to review my portfolio and talk job-acquisition-strategy. I was appreciative since he too said, yup, they aren’t hiring. In fact, they have consolidated their staff. But he believes that the downturn will only last a couple more months. Then they will be hiring.
He liked my portfolio. He talked about the niche that he heads in the company – landscape restoration and recreation projects. EDAW is a big place. It had three secretaries and most folks sat in cubicles. But John was down to earth as were the other LAs I met. The restoration projects posted on the wall were interesting and I felt like this was an arena I knew little about but was excited at the prospect of learning. The planning studio, run by another man, did urban design projects (more familiar to me). The California transit line that will eventually connect northern and southern CA (neat), some high profile public plaza spaces, a new city in Vietnam which looked like a modern, gridded Versaille in plan (who knows what the landscape originally looked like. I imagined Vietnamese rice paddies, square in shape but essentially a productive wetland… and sadly the man who was working on it said he’d never been to Vietnam but had heard about it from his boss). My five minute exposure to the project surely does not allow me to understand it fully. I am woo-ed, I admit, by the travel opportunities, the cool perspectives of high rises and French curve green spaces and an Asian aesthetic crispness and willingness to go big or go home… and yet it sent a shiver down my spine. It made me wonder if, for the sake of a being employed and making my mortgage, I’d take a job that asked me to plat out cul-de-sacs in the desert or grid a wetland (with environmental rationalization of course. But it’s this rationalization I find dangerous). I’ve been told over and over that these types of projects are the bread and butter of many firms. We can’t all work on public greenway projects. But I have a mortgage (did I mention that yet?)
Only a week in California and ALL my job prospects were ones that I heard about through connections I had made through friends and friends of friends. Lesson - make ANY connection possible. GO in. MEET. MAKE an impression. GIVE them something to remember you by (something that makes you distinctive). KEEP in touch afterwards.
I changed back into my tank top at a gas station next to I-80 and headed north towards Idaho. Boise seems like a cool town.
Graduate. Roll dice.
A number of people, including articles in Landscape Architecture Magazine written by well known and successful landscape architects suggested that one way to weather the economic belly flop is to start a blog. I am not sure that a blog will stick my name and portfolio under the right noses (not likely) but it hopefully will make other newly graduated, unemployed, jobless but not aimless or goal-less people like me chuckle. As we slowly graduate into this economy and our student loans become active and hungry, we have either chosen to hunker down in our own proverbial tornado shelters OR hit the road with Kerouac's books on tape and a trail of family and friends who can both offer a couch, good company and an internet connection. Both strategies involve a constant fishing for opportunities (the "I'd do that" list gets longer every day. When my mom's neighbor asks me advice about rose pruning and proper grass care, I used to politely remind her that I didn't get a Masters in Garden Care. Now I'm considering feigning rose and grass expertise, maybe even printing a business card and starting a business to compete with the 14 year old boys down the street who mow lawns for 30 bucks a pop).
But really, here's the deal. I just graduated. I am talented. It doesn't seem to matter. In many ways I am happy that there are not five fantastic firms throwing big salaries my way. I have no strings, no obligations and lots of people and places I've been wanting to see but have not because my head has been buried in Photoshop, AutoCAD and InDesign for the past three years.
I like to travel. The last ten years of my life has been a hop-scotch game between countries around the world and experiences. I like to write. Thus so far the doom and gloom of the recession hasn't given me too much anxiety.
I will use this blog to reflect on my own path and experiences. I hope that people who read it will feel lightened that we are all in a similar boat. Our training made us "Jacks and Jills" of many trades (and, as the saying goes, "Masters of none"... but we don't need to dwell on that) and that variety, open-mindedness and broad skill base will serve us well. We need to share experiences, learn collectively from this new employment climate and keep in mind that people will always need creative, beautiful, natural spaces and the environment will always need our attention, protection and respect. We'll all be fine.
So here goes (please excuse the blog-beginner... I'll figure it out)!
Start: Tucson, Arizona
But really, here's the deal. I just graduated. I am talented. It doesn't seem to matter. In many ways I am happy that there are not five fantastic firms throwing big salaries my way. I have no strings, no obligations and lots of people and places I've been wanting to see but have not because my head has been buried in Photoshop, AutoCAD and InDesign for the past three years.
I like to travel. The last ten years of my life has been a hop-scotch game between countries around the world and experiences. I like to write. Thus so far the doom and gloom of the recession hasn't given me too much anxiety.
I will use this blog to reflect on my own path and experiences. I hope that people who read it will feel lightened that we are all in a similar boat. Our training made us "Jacks and Jills" of many trades (and, as the saying goes, "Masters of none"... but we don't need to dwell on that) and that variety, open-mindedness and broad skill base will serve us well. We need to share experiences, learn collectively from this new employment climate and keep in mind that people will always need creative, beautiful, natural spaces and the environment will always need our attention, protection and respect. We'll all be fine.
So here goes (please excuse the blog-beginner... I'll figure it out)!
Start: Tucson, Arizona
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