I'm glad I found this community so I thought I'd share a little about me as it relates to architecture. I hope an introduction post is ok for this community.
I've been an architectural drafter for almost 17 years now at the same firm. I started out right out of a technical college as a drafter and have moved through the ranks up to senior drafter and have done some project management here and there for smaller projects. I'm the company BIM manager and have been for about 12 years now.
My original plan was to continue school and get a masters and become an architect, but one of the architects I worked with discourage that, but not by anything he said, but by his experience in school. He put in a ton of time and effort and is a workaholic and to this day he's still not licensed. It just seemed like way too much work and very little reward. He left the firm around 11 years ago.
Fast forward to last year (2020) and I found out that there's an option in some states to use work experience to replace a degree on the path to getting licensed, I learned this from a coworker who had just gone this route, he's got 31 years of drafting and project management. So I got to talking with my wife about getting licensed and we decided that I should go for it, and to get licensed by my 40th birthday, which is in December 2021.
I've got a little under 9 months now to pass all the ARE exams. I take the first one in a week. Wish me luck! Also, I'll gladly take any advice for taking the exams. 🙂
After 15 years of working at the firm, I was finally able to go out and see the finished project, and I was able to take some photos of it. I will note that I've been to a handful of projects but none that I worked on so it wasn't as special. Also, we do work all over the US, and very few projects in my state (Utah).
Here's a couple photos of that project. It was a school in Minnesota that we added on a performing arts center and a bunch of classrooms. We also did the original building around 2010, which I also worked on, so it was a double whammy.
I look forward to learning and sharing more about architecture in this community!
