I'm currently a Junior in high school located in Houston, TX interested in pursuing a career in architecture. I want to spend this summer either interning or shadowing a firm near me, but don't have any connections or experience contacting firms.
I'm willing to reach out to nearly every firm in my area, but am unsure how to go about it. If anyone has advice on how to find internships for high school students, or even lives in the area and knows of some opportunities, your word would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you!
Non Sequitur
Mar 9, 21 12:32 pm
If you want relevant experience, go work construction and learn to swing a hammer. That experience will be ten times more relevant to architecture than whatever gofer jobs a random office might be able to offer a HS kid.
b3tadine[sutures]
Mar 9, 21 1:42 pm
This is the correct advice. Always. The only thing that working, shadowing, or whatever provides is a healthy disdain for the practice of Architecture.
RJ87
Mar 9, 21 2:57 pm
I agree with the above, as you likely wouldn't have many (if any) skills the office could bill out. Even new college grads are mostly useless in the beginning.
Chad Miller
Mar 9, 21 6:10 pm
I kind of agree with the above advice. Shadow an architect for a day to see what it's really like. Once that is done then try doing various construction trades, wood framing, concrete, and steel. You'll be doing manual labor but you will see a lot.
whistler
Mar 10, 21 3:07 pm
Yup what he said! Learn more on the job site at this stage of your life.
I would make contact with the above person, Aleks Savitski. Make it a professional ish email and ask to have an informational zoom meeting to get advice on what to do. Keep it under 30 minutes and promise to keep it at that time in the email. This person is likely to be able to point you in the direction of the young Architect's forum. When I was starting out these folks in Chicago were invaluable. Tell them you want to meet recent graduates and more experienced professionals to learn more about the profession and the path forward. Most AIA chapters have people willing to mentor you and people are always flattered when you as for advice.
Also there is a very good university in the area, Rice, they have an Architecture School and they might have summer programs and you can, once the pandemic is under control, go to the speaker series.
We had a speaker series in undergraduate school at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and we also made monthly road trips to Washington University in St Louis to visit their lecture series, those were fun evenings and we made a point to hang out with the students from the campus we visited after the lecture.
Also the summer lab is a good idea, the one at U of Huston is good.
Hey all,
I'm currently a Junior in high school located in Houston, TX interested in pursuing a career in architecture. I want to spend this summer either interning or shadowing a firm near me, but don't have any connections or experience contacting firms.
I'm willing to reach out to nearly every firm in my area, but am unsure how to go about it. If anyone has advice on how to find internships for high school students, or even lives in the area and knows of some opportunities, your word would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you!
If you want relevant experience, go work construction and learn to swing a hammer. That experience will be ten times more relevant to architecture than whatever gofer jobs a random office might be able to offer a HS kid.
This is the correct advice. Always. The only thing that working, shadowing, or whatever provides is a healthy disdain for the practice of Architecture.
I agree with the above, as you likely wouldn't have many (if any) skills the office could bill out. Even new college grads are mostly useless in the beginning.
I kind of agree with the above advice. Shadow an architect for a day to see what it's really like. Once that is done then try doing various construction trades, wood framing, concrete, and steel. You'll be doing manual labor but you will see a lot.
Yup what he said! Learn more on the job site at this stage of your life.
https://aiahouston.org/v/site-...
Staff Liaison
Aleks Savitski
[email protected]
I would make contact with the above person, Aleks Savitski. Make it a professional ish email and ask to have an informational zoom meeting to get advice on what to do. Keep it under 30 minutes and promise to keep it at that time in the email. This person is likely to be able to point you in the direction of the young Architect's forum. When I was starting out these folks in Chicago were invaluable. Tell them you want to meet recent graduates and more experienced professionals to learn more about the profession and the path forward. Most AIA chapters have people willing to mentor you and people are always flattered when you as for advice.
Also there is a very good university in the area, Rice, they have an Architecture School and they might have summer programs and you can, once the pandemic is under control, go to the speaker series.
https://arch.rice.edu/
We had a speaker series in undergraduate school at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and we also made monthly road trips to Washington University in St Louis to visit their lecture series, those were fun evenings and we made a point to hang out with the students from the campus we visited after the lecture.
Also the summer lab is a good idea, the one at U of Huston is good.
https://uh.edu/architecture/sp...
As for Construction, if you are not 18 you might have a hard time getting on site jobs due to labor laws and liability, but you should try that too.
Best of Luck
Over and OUT
Peter N
Also https://www.acementorhouston.org/