Interns at the BC Home + Garden Show

by Abdel Munem Amin

Ask any intern and they will tell you that the registration process can be difficult and overwhelming, especially when the rewards seem so distant and intangible. Interns are attracted to the profession for various reasons, but it is easy to lose sight of those reasons when you are confined in front of a computer trying to make sense of all the RFIs that just came through.

One of the reasons that attracted this intern to architecture was the romance of designing customized spaces and the satisfaction of successfully completing a project. However, I spend most of my time adjusting plans to conform to code rather than the needs of an end user. Not to mention the fact that the end user for commercial applications is the hypothetical public rather than an individual with explicit characteristics.

One venue that affords interns the opportunity to talk to prospective end users is at the BC Home + Garden Show. The Ask an Architect booth at the show is one of several AIBC community outreach programs. This year the Home + Garden show took place at BC place from February 18–22. Several interns volunteered their time at this event and felt that their participation was worthwhile.

Ariane Truong, a volunteer intern, noted that the booth helped raise awareness about the role of architects. Truong felt “it was great to have exposure for the profession and show that we are a necessary service, even for residential projects. I got the impression a lot of people think architects mainly do big, commercial or institutional projects and aren't aware of the benefits an architect can bring, even to small residential projects.” As a direct result of the booth at the Home + Garden Show, there was a noticeable increase in attendance at the AIBC’s Saturday morning Ask an Architect drop-in sessions, as more people became aware of the benefits of hiring an architect for their projects.

The Home + Garden show is a great way to meet the people that could eventually inhabit our designs and have informal chats about their dream projects. This sort of experience complements the skills learned within an office environment on the road to licensing. Furthermore, the hours spent volunteering can be logged as community work in your CERB, which can otherwise be difficult to obtain.

The AIBC encourages interns to take part in the event and pairs an intern with a registered architect during their shift so the intern always has someone experienced to help with the tougher questions. Varouj Gumuchian, another volunteer intern, recommends this experience to other interns and advises that as long as interns are thoughtful and take an active role at the booth, they can get a lot out of the event.

The next BC Home + Garden Show is scheduled for April 15–18, 2010 and interns who are interested in taking part should contact the AIBC communications department at communications@aibc.ca.

Mentors & Logbooks

As interns we should be meeting with our mentors frequently. What keeps some interns from meeting their mentors as frequently as they should is often a simple case of not getting the experience log book hours ready for review and signature. Since the mentor’s signature is required on logged experience, the frequency of meeting a mentor to discuss work, experience, the profession etc. has become contingent on getting a signature in the logbook - no logbook, no meeting. Logging hours is a task that often gets put on the backburner for months, sometimes years! This is a bad habit to get into particularly if it is causing you to decrease the frequency of meetings with your mentor.

One solution is to create motivation to complete the logbook. There are many ways to do this of course but one we’d like to suggest is to make a meeting schedule with your mentor in advance of completing your logbook. At your next meeting, for example, set a date for your following meeting 4 or 6 months. That will give you a deadline to complete your logbook, make sure you get your experience in on time, and make the most out of you mentor relationship.

Aside from all this – and a much preferred additional option – is to make a regularly scheduled appointment to meet with your mentor to talk shop. You don’t have to, and should not limit the relationship to one of log book signing but rather should seek to gain as much knowledge out of your mentor as you can.

Another solution is to make the process of logging hours easier. Many of us have created spreadsheets to help automate the task. These spreadsheets often start out saving time but end up becoming cumbersome and complex especially as the number of projects increases. At the intern committee we are working on creating a spreadsheet to help handle this task. If you have a spreadsheet that you think works well and would like to share it with us, we’d love to see it. Our email address is interncommittee@yahoo.com. Thank you!