[Chupacabra]

Anchorage (pop. 300k) has 3-4 LAs on staff, split between facilities, parks&rec, etc.  I think the superintendent of parks&rec is an LA as well.

[Chupacabra]

I memed this as a joke, but it’s something you’ll have to memorize.  The sad thing is that after a while it starts to make sense.

[Chupacabra]

I took the 40 hour prep course a few weeks ago.  It’s just generic PM concepts drowned in ridiculous jargon you have to memorize in order to pass a test.  It’s more alphabet soup after your name, but it’s well known and broadly applied.

If you work with large organizations I think it might be worth it.  It’s most common with larger companies (it’s often a requirement for oil&gas and big construction companies here), so if you have large clients or primes/subs the will probably respond to it favorably.  It seems to be becoming the international standard (ISO) and there’s more and more PMPs everyday.  That could matter for you in Thailand.

I used to spend a bit of time in Thailand.  Love the place and regret not being able to visit as often.

[Chupacabra]

My MiL is from Sao Paulo.  She really wants us to spend a few years down there so the kids can learn Portugese.  She’s connected so who knows.

It sounds like it is booming, and there’s an olympics and a World Cup coming up (I believe), so there’ll be plenty of bubble work for the next 4-6 years. 

[Chupacabra]

One project I worked on recently had a 300′ steel cable pedestrian suspension bridge as an alternative (wasn’t selected – way out of line with the site’s sense of place, plus costs, plus impacts to archeological sites).  The cable support posts were going to be around 80′ tall and the cable anchors would have had to have been set back 100′ or so beyond the bases and 40′ deep (if I recall correctly).  The prime on the contract was an architecture firm and they subbed the bridge design out to an engineering firm (it was part of a 1000′ boardwalk system).  This bridge and boardwalk system was being designed to support up to 10,000 pounds, so quite a bit more substantial than you are looking at.

If you can put some posts in the swale (why can’t you?) you can find companies that make prefab bridge spans up to 15′ long which would be much, much cheaper and simpler.

This probably doesn’t help any, but there you go.

[Chupacabra]

The USAF owns and develops a lot of real estate with some pretty strict requirements (same is true for all the branches).  I’ve read some of their planning manuals and they are actually pretty good.

The DoD has a Master Planning Institute:

http://dodmpi.org/

[Chupacabra]

LOL, I shouldn’t write about communication when I’m multitasking on my iphone.

To clarify, I think a design education does two things for you other programs don’t.  The first is you learn how to solve problems using a design process.  This can be applied successfully to non-design problems.  You don’t learn to solve problems this way in a social or natural science degree program.  The other thing you pick up in a design program is the ability to communicate complex messages to wide audiences.  I have found both abilities extremely useful in a range of non-design work scenarios.

[Chupacabra]

The analytical thinking, technical, and communications skills typically learned in a design program are invaluable in the real world and I believe we need more people with this kind of training in the world.

 

I think this is an excellent point and I would say it is one of the most significant skills I developed as part of my design education.  I work with a wide of range of “experts” is a variety of fields and the ability to communicate complex ideas and to cross-cut across the disciplines is invaluable and most other professions don’t use it in the way we do.  One of the rolls I’ve built for myself is as a communitcator and process facilitator.  I also feel the design process is a problem solving process that offers a different approach to analysis and solution finding that is extremely valuable beyond the application to the arrangement of spaces.

[Chupacabra]

I’m a planner for a large land management agency.  My work can probably be grouped into three different areas:

planning – comprehensive land use plans, master plans, facilities plans, site plans, resource plans (I do a tiny bit of designy type stuff for some of these projects)

environmental services – resource assessments, wetlands inventories, visual resource management, NEPA

GIS and graphic design – I haven’t hardly touched AutoCAD but I use GIS and Adobe almost daily. 

 

My job doesn’t fit nicely into the tradition LA model, although LAs often do this sort of work.  But, my state licensing board recognizes what I do as qualifying for experience towards licensure so that’s a plus even if I’ll probably never work on construction documents.  It’s a bit of a different track to take professionally but I like it.

 

edited to add: I also manage contracts for the work done out of house.  Quite a bit is done by consultants.

[Chupacabra]

I don’t think this profession is worth massive debt.  UM is a good school and the job market is still too weak to expect a high enough salary to repay the debt you’d likely have from Harvard.  Not to say there aren’t benefits to going to the GSD, and it could make a difference when you head off to look for work (depending on a bunch of variables) but I don’t think the cost/benefit analysis washes out.  You don’t want to finish school and be crippled by debt and with limited professional prospects (at least in the short and medium terms).

 

I have a similar background.  While my design training has been beneficial for me in many ways, my current position and the entire range of opportunities I’ve encountered since I finished my MLA in 2008 have been primarily because of my environmental background.  The MLA has been an important piece of my professional “package” but it’s that added to the rest of my education, experience, and background that has opened doors for me.  I think planning, environmental services, and resource related work has weathered the recession better than the design side of the profession.

[Chupacabra]

Pomona, unless you have a massive trust fund. 

[Chupacabra]

The NPS does almost zero design in house (planning is a different story, though).

[Chupacabra]

This may not fit, but what about rivers like the White Salmon that are having dams removed?

[Chupacabra]

I’d need to hear more specifics to give fair advice, but I’ll go ahead and play devil’s advocate. 

 

I recently completed an MLA and pretty much all of my classmates had a hard time with critiques and being directed in studio by the professors.  What they called being “yelled” at I didn’t even make note of.  I was also surprised to see so many adults crying after being told they needed to make improvements.  Maybe it’s a generational thing or maybe it’s a class thing, I don’t know.  I’m not trying to be a jerk, but maybe you need the attitude adjustment and not your boss. 

 

However, some people are just miserable to their core and they cause a lot of unnecessary strife and dysfunction.  The economy is slow, so bide your time and start preparing now to move on.  Many bosses can motivate people and get work done without demeaning or breaking people down. 

 

The other posters have given you some excellent advice on how to deal with criticism and a-hole bosses.  Learn from this experience because you’ll run into this again and again throughout your working life.  One plus is that after having to worked for pricks, you’ll be able to judge them quickly and not waste time working for them. 

[Chupacabra]

A good resource or case study might be the Laws of the Indies.  This was the administrative tool that guided the establishment of military outposts in the Spanish New World.  It included design guidelines that morphed civilian and military.  To this day, many Latin American towns are centered around a Plaza De Las Armas that served as parade deck, social space, and inner defensive perimeter in case of siege, but that now is the communities central plaza.

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