At AAP NYC us undergrads are encouraged to sync up with local architecture firms for a twice weekly internship experience. The firms range from huge and corporate to small and intimate — everyone’s experience is completely different. I fall somewhere towards the intimate. I am stationed this semester at SITU STUDIO in Brooklyn, which is a design consultancy firm.
Some refuted expectations about working in the real world: one, no one explains things to you. You are assumed to be competent and more. Two, working with design consultants at a small firm means being involved in a lot of short-term and fast-paced projects. The expectation of craft is very high, and I spend most of my time perfecting the exquisite objects I am employed to create. The office is a quiet one—all direction is sent out with a whisper and all collaboration happens within a ten decibel threshold. What this means for me is that I have to always be thinking ahead, I have to be at the disposal at all times of all people in the office, and that I am involved in most of the short term activities attached to each project. That means a lot of laboring to actually execute the finished project. While I work I get to see clients enjoy the fruits of my labor. That being said, I know that my blood sweat and tears are contributing to the very lifeblood of the firm — each movement, each detail counts for a company such as this.
The downsides: deadlines are also very real. And they don’t wait for anyone. In school you can ‘not finish’ something — it’s not at all recommended, but there is life after such pitfalls. In the office, that’s not quite the case. You are trying to hit a fixed target—you yourself are the moving object, and there is a window in which your goal is feasible. If you fail, you don’t get a second chance or makeup or extension. You just mess up, and there’s a great amount of accountability in that.
Working two days a week on top of that, is also a sort of downside. You are only there for a very small amount of time. So you don’t have a lot of staying power. You are often shifted around to gain a taste of one thing at the firm and then like the breeze, you move on to something else. You yearn to be more involved—but you don’t have the time or ability to spread yourself that thin. So, work becomes a juggling game between making a good impression, learning something, and the economical tradeoff of how your firm can make the best use of you. Needless to say, participating at all is better than not participating. And I’ve learned a lot of practical skills. And the kind of flow it takes to get a firm moving. It’s an enlightening experience—and it certainly is helping me to figure out what’s in store after Cornell, and what my career may look like from here on out.