Reply To: I Always Knew This Day Would Come…

hahahahahaha!!! Thank you Henry. Just playing around a bit… the program is pretty fun. It  encourages child-like exploration of shapes and color. Just drag stuff around until it looks right. 

Funny you should mention a career in landscape architecture… The first major I declared in 1996 was landscape architecture. I took the intro-class and did well but got intimidated by the professors lecture at the end of the semester about what was to come and decided I’d rather snowboard and screw-off instead, which I did quite well. I ended up graduating with a liberal arts degree, minor in sociology, with a good chunk of journalism in the middle some where… it’s a little foggy, er, smoky, er, cloudy, like an unfiltered beer.

After working construction for a year after graduation I got a job selling data-mining software in Chicago. A year and a half later I was miserable and didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in a 5×7 cube with the frat-boys that seemed perfectly happy to. I took a “what should I do with myself” test and at the top of the list was landscape architecture. After kicking myself repeatedly, I decided to go back to school to finish what I started. I went back to Colorado and established residency while waiting tables and working in a bike shop. I got into the LA program at Colorado State on a prayer and a dream and worked my butt off, completing the 5 year program in 3 years. After graduation, I was fortunate to get hired by a hot-shot firm in SoCal where I went and killed myself for 4 months, eating, sleeping(if I was lucky) and *#@% landscape architecture. I basically fit a year of experience into 4 months. Then in Nov. ’08 the world came to a screeching halt and so did I. With nothing to obsess on, I went from 120mph to 0 in .5 seconds. It was grim. All hopes dashed, the dream over, down the rabbit hole I went…

Things are a bit better these days… I’ve managed to squeak 8 months of employment out of the last two and a half years. A few months at a nursery and 5 months at a very colorful solo-practice. I’m broke but not broken. My design interests have drifted away from landscape architecture but are slowly returning. I don’t know that I’ll ever be as passionate or dedicated to a profession that could so easily cast me, and so many others, aside or maybe I just need to make sure I don’t get bucked off again… either way, I’m ready to get back on the horse. It will be a different ride this time. I’ve learned a lot in the last few years…

So, to make a long story short, yeah, I’ve considered a career in landscape architecture and reconsidered it… and considered it… and reconsidered it… I might even consider it again…

Why? Know somebody that’s hiring?