Well, these are tasks that we often give to student interns, but they aren't the ONLY tasks the interns get to do. After all, these things do have to get done in the office, and anything non-billable and that doesn't need much skill or supervision is always going to go to the lowest paid person in the firm.

But, if these are the ONLY things that interns do in this firm then why do you want to go back? If you're going to be fulltime there then one would hope that they plan to integrate you into project teams and that at least you'd be working on small design tasks and would get to be involved through the whole life of one or more projects. Have you talked to the firm about what their plans and expectations for you are?

As for IDP: unless this is one of those firms that ends up in NCARB's literature as a "model" firm (which it doesn't sound like from your description) it's unlikely that they pay any particular attention to your IDP status or that they make efforts to cater your experience to NCARB's unit requirements.
By the way: your previous summer internships probably already count toward IDP (they will if you had already finished your 3rd year of undergrad architecture major or 1st year of M.Arch, and worked at least 35 hours per week for at least 10 weeks straight.) Also, IDP is unrelated to the AIA. IDP is administrated by NCARB. The AIA is a professional organization that doesn't have any authority to make or enforce regulations.

Do make sure to contact NCARB (www.ncarb.org) and start an IDP record as soon as possible. It's always best to document experience as soon as possible - because you never know if your previous employers will still be in business, alive, and that they'll remember you later. Also, some states don't accept much IDP experience that's reported retroactively (for instance in Ohio you have to report the experience within 6 months of working it, or it is disqualified.) Check with your state board for any weird rules of this sort (state board addresses are on NCARB's website.)

Right on point aluminate.

let me get this out of the way -- F idp

billing and $$$$ aside...
!a lot of student interns just dont give a crap so why even bother giving them a part in a project if they dont care what happens to it? in the long term! (i'm speaking in general of course)

how we assign work to interns also depends on the status of the intern within the greater heirarchy of the firm. where i'm at the intern who's the most experienced gets all the good projects and assignments and none of the busy work. the least experienced get most of the busy work and a taste of the good stuff to keep them hoping.

That's a good point. Often previous experiences with interns will affect how the firm utilizes and treats them in the future.
Last year we had a student intern who had expressed that he was impatient to have a larger design role in a project. He asked a number of times to "let me run with a whole project."
One day we sat down with him and went through all the parameters of a new project with him, and explained that he was going to be responsible for the schematic design (the project was fairly small, and not under a short deadline, so it seemed perfect for his part-time schedule.) We talked about the schedule, the client's program, setting up the project, etc. etc.

After more than an hour and a half of this, as our meeting was wrapping up, the intern said "oh, by the way, my semester is getting really busy and I won't be able to work here anymore." He offered to find a friend to work for us, and to relay all the info we'd just told him about the project to this friend. We declined the offer. He handed in his keys and we never saw him again.

We've never been sure whether he was overwhelmed by the prospect of the project (despite having begged for his own project) or whether he came in that day knowing he was quitting and just didn't know how to get around to coming out and telling us.

In any case, since then we've been a little less willing to cater to student intern's aspirations, and more likely to give them tasks in daily bite-sized pieces - so that if this happens to be their last day at least we're not depending on their continued participation in the projects.

One of the professors from the first year of my undergrad program hired me as a summer intern after my second year. I spent almost the entire summer building physical models. It was hard work, but a total blast as well. The firm is small, so employees at all levels must take on more responsibility than people in comparable positions at other, larger firms.

I'm now in my third year of the undergrad program and the same professor asked me to stop in for a day or two to prepare a diagrammatic 3D model and animation for a meeting (which I'm working on right now, meeting is tonight). I find that a lot of times, if you take the initiative, or ask for more responsibility, you'll get it. And when you come through, you receive invitations to do more challenging work. But as Aluminate points out, sometimes an intern isn't ready for that level of responsibility. The principal of the firm I'm working seems to know my ability level better than I do, and as a result he challenges me consistently while also keeping things just within my grasp.

Based on what I've seen, heard and experienced (which is very little in all respects), the smaller firm seems to be a better fit for an intern looking for rapidly increasing levels of responsibility.

the univeristy I went to had a strong internship program and I worked in 4 firms of various sizes and in various cities.

I found that even while young (a 3rd yr student) that I was highly utilized in a small firm that did not have much experience with student interns and, at the time we were not that busy. However, I was put on models only in a large firm where I felt I could have done quite a bit more as well as learned more. This larger firm had maybe 15 -20 interns there at the time I was there and had a long history of internships with my particular school. But I think it is really more of a trust issue with the larger firm. Meaning, they don't have to trust you with more responsibility because you are short term and there more to fill in the gaps for them whereas, a smaller firm HAS to allow the student to do more because the don't have the bodies to move around.

I also had my fair share of archiving old projects, cleaning, running errands etc, it is just part of the business. But how a student intern is utilized and how much a student can be exposed to and learn really varies from firm to firm and student to student. Most firms are really good at integrating but there are some out there that just don't know what to do with a kid beyond the dirty work that no one else cares for.

I understand the points made on this thread, but the fact is that interns get discouraged by architecture because they spend most of their time doing busy work and not getting practical experience is a problem. It takes them a longer time to complete IDP and eventually get licensed, if they even want to get licensed after a few years of getting second-hand architecture experience. I have heard a lot of opinions, and it seems that most architects are okay with thie current state of interns because they had to do it when they were students. Isn't it time for a change? Isn't this one of the reasons that there are so few licensed architects? It seems that there is this strong pull within the field to keep processes in architecture the same, but I don't think it will survive without change.

I don't know many project managers, architects, principals, etc. that don't also spend an awful lot of their time doing 'busy work'. As I recall from my early years as a gopher, interns maybe just have a low threshold for this seemingly unimportant work. It's always more interesting to feel important to the development of the design rather than an integral part of managing the paper trail.

You get a little more patient. Like it or not, we in this industry spend a lot more time making copies, reviewing pay requests, looking at concrete pours, and reading deadly contract legal-ese than we do designing. As a sole practitioner I'm getting a much clearer idea about the way that time breaks out.

If interns are sometimes taken for granted, it's probably because their more experienced cohorts think they've finally discovered a way to carve out more time for their own design efforts. Shame on 'em.

I agree with Steve - also on my own and a LOT of my time is spent doing the mundane tasks that I would probably have an intern ehlp me with if I had one. Reasons are : 1) I am the licensed architect amongst my partners and so really should be concentrating on design if I can, 2) Office work isn't billable, so yes it makes economic sense for someone who is paid a lot less to be doing it, 3) an intern may not have enough of an understanding of architecture to complete more complex tasks. This varies for every person, of course, but being a small company we have zero profit margin, we just can't afford to spend time teaching/explaining things to a student. But therefore I also don't want to take any interns on yet, because I don't feel it is fair to hire someone and have them do exclusively copying and making phone calls. On the other hand, I don't want to end up having to completely redo a set of drawings because someone with little experience did them.
My experience working in an office with people right out of undergrad is that it takes them about a year to become comfortable with the software, understand how to read drawings, know which questions to ask, etc. Once again this varies with the person, but I think it would be normal to assume that everyone is going to be doing pretty mundane stuff for the first year or so. It's not that much time to wait, and you can learn a lot by asking questions, sitting in on meetings, etc.

When I was on vacation in Montreal this past summer, my buddies were up in one of the hotel suites watching a lesbian show while I was donwstairs in the lobby reading about Eero Saarinen. One of the anecdotes in the book referred to how Eero qualified as a genius -- it was simply a function of his work ethic. Reading that anecdote within that context was especially humorous and personally meaningful.

My father taught me to work hard at everything. "Anything you put your name on is important" he constantly told me. I learned to take pride in my work, and giving it my all was always more important than the outcome. That is where I discovered confidence, not worrying about "failure", etc. I feel like I'm caught in this really great place between two generations. The generation I hang out with that respects partying hard and the generation I admire that respects working hard.

Integrity means giving photocopies and 3D models equal amounts of concentration and care. There is plenty to learn from both activities, the former in the content and the latter in the process. The important thing is to be enthusiastic about any tasks the boss delegates.

i have to split myself and agree with both archbishop and sahar...both are valid points, though i can't believe you passed up that show to read about eero...READING CAN BE DONE AT ANY TIME, MAN!!!