Ordinarily it's best to try to stay a year minimum if at all possible. And any pattern of multiple short-term jobs will start to add up and count against you. But in this situation, where you're definitely planning to return to school relatively soon, it probably doesn't matter as much, and in fact having the experiences of more than one firm to compare/contrast may be more useful to you.
You'll probably find that after you finish your M.Arch potential employers will look at the time before you graduated with that degree as being part of your "student" phase - regardless of whether you already had a professional degree at that time - so it won't be looked at as critically as if this job came after your terminal degree.
If you're planning to count this job toward IDP you should consider whether you've met the minimum duration yet (8 consecutive weeks at 35 hours per week minimum, or 6 consecutive months at no less than 20 hours per week if you've been working less than 35 hours per week.) Other than that I don't think it's a big deal and not going to kill a career at this point.

6 mos out of school there is not much that could kill your career at this point. let's see, yep, i was selling cookies (job1), music (job2), and books (job3) in a mall.

Agree with above - if you're going to grad school, job-hopping during the years in between school can be easily - and truthfully - spun as exposing yourself to different aspects of the field and trying to learn in varied environments.

I hope you can leave this job on good terms, though, which means continuing to work earnestly right up to your last day, not bailing out and leaving the employer stuck with a deadline, and explaining delicately to your employer that you feel it is important to expose yourself to new experiences at this point in your career. Good luck.

If you're going to graduate school, by all means it's ok to "hop and skip" through several firms. It's an unfortunate fact that many firms are disheartening places to work, particularly for newly graduated people, or the particular office culture of a firm may not be the right "fit". For those who are done with school, it's an even bigger issue to find the right firm, know how to receive interesting and worthwhile assignments, learn to navigate the office culture towards "promotability", and knowing when to leave (and how).

If you're certain you're going to grad school, don't waste your time in a bad office experience. But find another job first, before you leave, so that you have continuity of employment. That's important.

speaking as someone who has had many jobs, i'd suggest that you think of things less in terms of time frames (1 year, for example) but more in terms of projects. let's say, for instance, that you decided to stick with a firm because they were working on a new hq building for a bank. maybe that means that you were there for a 17 and a half months but it doesn't really matter because you saw the project through (whether or not it's a good project is irrelevent at your age).

however, if you have a plan to leave after one year but don't really have any compelling reason to explain why you left then it just appears that you left because you things got tough or you didn't like the place. maybe that's the case, but you need to challenge yourself to dig deeper into your motivations otherwise you'll be unable to sell yourself effectively to your next employer and then you might never get out of the trap of being a marginalized and unhappy employee.

thats a good point

I think chiwoman made a good point in another thread (chicago arch. firms, i believe), perhaps there is an opportunity within the large firm to find something more to your liking.... personally, that "challenging" thing is a big deal to me even if the work won't be in arch record. Find a way to push on to something that might interest you. Of course, it may not be there, but if it is, you would save yourself a lot of trouble with job hunting and the like. Communicate with your supervisor, don't let on that you're "not proud of the work"... but take a look at what other people are doing within the office.

thank you all for your input. will weigh all the pros and cons before i make a decision. would you say that the place where you work would have any influence on grad school apps? someone was talking to me about it the other day. perhaps it does, perhaps it makes no difference??

it could have some influence, but only as one thing among other things.

if the firm has name recognition it MIGHT help, but your role there will have been fairly elementary (sorry) so no one in an admissions dept will have expected that you had major involvement in the direction of a project. maybe if you made a sweet model you could show it...

NOT having been at a firm with name recognition won't hurt you.

For a different perspective. I don't think it's unusual for people fresh out of undergrad to get a little anxious after 6 months in the "real world." Once the novelty of earning a paycheck and working on projects that actually get built wears off it's easy to let the mind wander. Reminding yourself that this isn't why I wanted to become an architect, etc. I was there once, and hear it all the time from the newbies in the office.

I'm not saying you should "tough it out," but I do think you are realtively fresh to the scene. Another 6 months from now your perspective might be different. Work on one or two more projects where you are at now and then re-evaluate. That's my advise.

If you are going to job-hop I would suggest you take Puddles' advise. Make your break clean at the end of a project. In interviews I do ask work history (pre-MArch included) if it looks excessive. I've literally been told by people that they left when assigned to do construction details in CAD and "my degree make me better than that" or "I wanted to do 3D, not CD's."

Must firms believe, probably accurately, that new employees who are recent grads usually have little professional-level ability to perform responsible and significant work without close supervision under more experienced staff. So new grads find themselves doing task-oriented work which may be quite unfulfilling, particularly if they have unrealistic ideas of already being a "designer" due to the ego-building experience of being an outstanding student in school. School and practice are two very different beasts. It's the nature of our profession that most professional ability to successfully function as an architect is "learned by doing" durings years of work, and not in the educational process at school while earning a professional degree. (This issue is clearly noted in every review of architectural education by architectural firms, and is a fundamental flaw in architectural education curriculum and philosophy.) Even our star-architects tend to be old men. (Excluding perhaps those with outstanding personal connections.)

In my experience, some firms are quite blunt about fact that several years of "grunt work" are required, almost like a character-building exercise, before advancement-oriented assignments are given. It's a highly unusual person with highly unusual circumstances (including connections) that can "jump the que" in this situation.

Satellite, if you hate the first job, then find a better one. But check working conditions, office dynamics, advancement opportunities, etc before making change to another office. And make sure you have a job, before you leave the first. Plenty of people hate their first job, leave, and don't experience any harm to their overall reputation as a "good employee/team player" - which is what firms are really looking for.