epic.blogging [one]

so its been a long time. a really long time. and i know this, ive known it for some time now. and i am sorry. to be honest, ive been quite selfish and have been wanting to just keep things to myself for a while now and i certainly didnt want to burden any of you with my issues. whats the old saying? "if you dont have something nice to say..." well, i decided not to say much of anything. but its been well over a month now, and i suppose its time to come out into the light. im warning you now, i dont know how long this is going to get, but theres a good chance its going to be quite a doozy. however, i should be able to include a number of pictures for your viewing enjoyment, so hopefully thatll make it a little easier.

so first things first i suppose... the big nasty ugly truth must come out. on august 21st [yes, the day AFTER i last blogged about nothing new happening in my life... irony? cruel mistress indeed....] i was laid off. it was friday at about 11:30 and i was discussing with a co-worker some things i was going to work on for the rest of the day to help her out with some things when i noticed the boss heading our way. he asked if he could see me in his office and of course i jumped to attention, sure thing and all. so he leads my into his office and closes the door and for the next 15 minutes discusses with me how hes letting me go and blah blah blah... the whole thing is still kind of a blur for me. i wont go into specifics, but the thing was not handled well in my opinion, at all. call me crazy, but i thought it was pretty customary for there to be at least one other person in the room, like an hr rep or something, for the sake of witnessing the whole thing and making sure everything went down legit.... maybe not. now im not saying things didnt go down legit, but my ex-boss definitely decided to take the opportunity to say some things that really got into my head. you can call that whatever you like, but this guy was in a position of power over me and i really just think the whole thing could have been handled better... but alas, time has passed, im no longer feeling any bitterness about the matter, it is what it is. he has to deal with his actions just as we all do, and if hes sleeping well at night, then good for him.

so after receiving this um... news... and having had some time to reflect on it since, ive come to some conclusions for myself that i feel are on the positive side. first of all, while it totally sucks not having work or any income, i've gotta say, i think this whole thing was a "blessing in disguise" kind of thing. the last few months at that office, work had been slowing down a lot - one of our big jobs got put on hold [the job id been working on the most] because of the economy or whatever - and id been struggling to keep myself busy a lot of the time [which resulted in way too many instances of the "walk of shame" - going around the office to every single project managers desk and practically begging for work... its so humiliating, i HATE the way things worked in that office. i should never have had to beg for work, there should have been some level of oversight among the project managers... some level of coordination amongst the entire office, but alas...] and i was really starting to feel quite miserable in my circumstances. things hadnt ever really been perfect there, but i had a long stent of complacency and i was just fine with that, work was work and i was DAMN lucky to have a job, right? i suppose... but like i said, those last few months... imagine walking into work every day wondering if that day was finally going to be the one. im sure ive mentioned this before, but i had been predicting that i was going to get laid off for some time, and every day i went to work my stomach was in knots with anxiety over whether or not it was going to happen that day. so in essence, at least now it was over, and i no longer had to feel that dread of not knowing when some impending thing is going to happen. so yeah, i was glad to be put out of my misery at last, so to speak. blessing in disguise.

secondly, ive been given the opportunity to really take a step back and re-evaluate where my life is going. at first i was obviously freaked out and i got the whole unemployment thing going because my parents convinced me it was what i needed to do. and that in and of itself was a whole other catastrophe, but finally as of a week ago, i received my first benefits and that was a very very good thing. but i digress... re-evaluation. so having to start the job search again, i finally had the opportunity [well i was forced to really, haha] to sit down and re-do my portfolio again, which was a really great thing. ive been wanting to start over since we moved to cincinnati and i started looking for jobs here, but i just never found the time. so now, with all of this starting over and getting back into the job search i was able to update my portfolio and have gotten it to a place where im pretty happy with it and its in a format [finally!] that should be pretty easy to just keep adding to as time goes on and i need to put new projects in to keep it current. so that was the first part of taking a step back before ultimately moving forward.

the second part of that was to re-evaluate what exactly i was doing and if it was in fact what i wanted to do. as i said, id been quite miserable going to work for a few months and part of it was definitely the feeling as if any day id lose my job thing, but there was another level as well. for some time i had really been feeling disheartened and unsatisfied with what i was doing at work and it was starting to eat at me. im at this point in my "career" as an architectural intern where im essentially in limbo. ive got my master's degree [which to be honest, more and more, feels like it means about, um... dick. in this industry. excuse my vulgarity, but it's to the point. in other industries, i feel like a master's degree just holds so much more value that in architecture. but in my field, its like, "eh, okay, whatever." like its the bare minimum or something. to any and all architecture firms out there, i stand up now and scream this to you on behalf of myself and everyone else in my situation. i went to school for 6 effing years! i have a mountain of debt so high from paying for 6 years of school that i will never dig out of it! treat me with some freaking respect! please! do you realize that my student loan payments are HALF what you pay me in a month?! ...sigh...]

so picking up where i left off some time ago... career, limbo, master's degree... right. so ive got my masters degree, which to me feels like it should be worth... something? ive got 2 years worth of relevant professional experience in an architecture office, but at the end of the day im still the lowest of the low. for some reason, theres this magical "3 years experience" threshold in architecture which moves you from the scum of the architecture industry category up a rung to the, well... he might not completely screw it up category. im not sure what im expected to learn in the next year that so far surpasses what i have in the last 2, but i am on pins and needles to find out.... so this whole limbo thing leaves me feeling extremely under-valued, under-paid, and under-respected in a workplace setting, and has caused me to do some serious reflection on what it is i really want to do with the rest of my life.

well the conclusion ive come to in that aspect of things is that i really truly think ive just not had the optimum work experiences in my field, certainly for what talents i DO have. i talk to friends and peers that are at different levels of their own architectural aspirations and i always get the feeling that somehow they have had extraordinarily different and better work experiences than i have at this point in my journey. take for example my friend manda. we worked together at my first job in cincy, a little over a year ago now. looking back on this experience, i honestly still have to say, it was one of the best office experiences i have ever had [certainly trumping the most recent.] i felt like the place was organized, there was a certain level of respect i felt from my project managers, and while no, not everything was perfect - when is it ever? - they really seemed to be trying to provide a work environment that was going to help me grow. they treated me like a real person, not just some other kid that can easily be replaced. however, enter manda. she worked at the same office, the same time period, and while she worked in a different area of the office [interiors] she had a drastically different feeling of the experience she got. in the grand scheme of her work experience, she felt that the experiences we shared, were not great, were not organized, were not respectful or challenging or rewarding, but were actually on the lower end of her experiences over all and seem to be more of the expected minimum for her... so how is it that we have such different views of the same place? i can only conclude that overall my other experiences must have been much worse by comparison for my best to be one of her worst... if that makes sense at all... i may be chasing rabbits here, so to get back on the trail.... ive decided that this most recent experience was just another in a line of not the best experiences [although i have had some good ones at some offices i really liked, and ive typically always liked the people i worked with, just not always the office environment, if you will...] and theres got to be something so much better still waiting out there. however, the wife also challenged me to consider the following... what is it that i would actually enjoy doing everyday that i had to go to work? she felt that obviously these architecture office jobs werent satisfying my day to day, and i always seemed to complain about work, so what was it that i wouldnt complain about?

well, after a lot of consideration i came to the conclusion that what ive always enjoyed doing was helping other people, and specifically helping them to learn. so it seems that the most rewarding path for me to take might be to teach. now this isnt totally out of left field or anything, ive always wanted to eventually end up as a professor, i just always assumed it would be sometime much further down the road, kind of an instead of retiring situation. you know that prof we've all had that was in his 60's or 70's and had had a long successful career before deciding to go into teaching to give back to the institutions that got him started? i wanted to be that guy. but the more i thought about it... life doesnt always take the path we want it to... and with this stupid economic downturn and architecture being viewed as more of a luxury than a necessity... well... maybe i should re-evaluate my time line. maybe i should think about getting into teaching now, and possibly pursue this architecture nonsense later on down the road... so with that, ive decided to start pursuing teaching more directly instead of on some indirect futuristic path.

over the last month ive applied for literally dozens and dozens of jobs in cincinnati. ive contact a ton of architecture firms, ive literally contacted every single homebuilder [even though i have such extreme qualms with the idea of spec homes and that entire industry...] in the greater cincinnati area, ive answered countless want-ads on craigslist or the half dozen career finder websites im enrolled in, and for a while there i even though maybe i could just jump over to the construction side of the industry and contacted a bunch of the big major construction companies in the areas as well. well... in that same last month my results are as follows... one. yes, one. one single, lone response to all of my attempts. and in this lone response i went in person to their office, filled out an application, was then interviewed with the most bizarre series of quizes and tests and questioning over a 3 hour period, only to in the end be satisfied that i was well qualified and as a result to offer me the most demeaningly low compensation i really could have imagined. i wasnt making a TON of money at my last job, or the one before that obviously - although i had been steadily getting a bump up in pay each time, but these people were offering me compensation for my level of skill and knowledge now that was on par with what i was earning a year and a half ago when i was still in my undergraduate work and only had a couple of summers work experience. to say the least i was taken aback a bit and asked for some time to consider the offer. then after having my wife act like i was crazy for not accepting ANY job on the spot, i eventually succeeded, called them back and said i was willing to accept... only to have them tell me that they hadnt completely decided on their needs yet and that theyd get back to me.... two weeks later they call me back and tell me that theyre really in need of a registered architect, and that theyre sorry.... a registered architect? seriosuly?? on the salary that they offered me - that she assured me was the most they could afford?? these people are obviously a bit out of their minds... good luck with that one...

so basically, i havent had any luck over the last month of unemployment and now im getting serious about this teaching thing. so far ive been doing a lot of research into the available positions, what kind of licensing [if any] will be required for certain levels of teaching, what requirements ill be expected to meet, what prospective teaching employers are looking for me to have when applying for these positions... and the list goes on. so far ive re-written and re-worked my resume specifically for teaching positions, and im beginning to work on cover letters and supporting materials [much like a portfolio] specific to each of the positions ive found that i think i may qualify for, and overall im making progress. but it is definitely a LOT of work and im still going to need some time before i really get deep into it...

so at this point in the blog, if you havent quit yet... well, im certainly impressed. and well, we've really only touched on one of 3 items i was intending to blog about in this post, so you might want to take a restroom break or grab a quick snack or a nap or something before getting settled in for whats still to come. [oh, and for your convenience, i've even decided to break this whole thing up into 3 parts as well, so hopefully it'll be a little easier to read. if youre planning to do it all at once, bear with me, im going to publish this first section now and then try to press on and continue with the other two and publish those as i complete them as well.] consider this....

...intermission one...