i got two job interviews for my fall internship semester this week. one is in seattle (!) and one is back in chicago. this period of time inspires a great deal of anxiety for me, which is certainly due to the amount of uncertainty.
where will i work? what city? what firm?
how will i measure up to other people that are applying?
what sets me apart from them?
where will i live when/if i get a job somewhere?
who will take over my lease in cincinnati?
so many variables.
the firm in seattle has a particular emphasis on educational architecture. a friend of mine actually worked there last spring, and encouraged me to apply there. he told me, when i told him that they contacted me about an interview, that i should have a stance on education and leverage my background as a teacher-turned-architect.
this got me thinking. what is my position? what would have made my situation better? it seems like there are so many factors that played into the environment, and that the building itself played a somewhat minor role in my students' lives. but it was their refuge from the city blocks that they had to traverse each day. it was their space, no matter what it was.
firstly, the school i taught in was originally built as an elementary school in the 1960s. it was a simply organized building - each of the three floors was one long hallway running north-south with classrooms on either side - maximum 15' wide, including a row of bright red full height lockers on either side. the gym was about half the size of a normal gym, and the auditorium and cafeteria were tucked away in various corners. during the few months of the year of sweltering urban heat (August, September, and maybe a bit of June at the end of the year), the building was cooled by portable air conditioners (on wheels the first year/in the window the second), but these air conditioners ran so much that you almost couldn't blame them when they stopped blasting arctic air three times a week. stairwells were glazed with glass block windows from the first floor all the way to the third. as the sun moved across the sky, the classrooms on the east side of the building would gradually warm up, though the west side of the building would be pelted with warm rays during the heat of the afternoons. we shared the building with an elementary school, so our students were limited to the first floor entry/administrative offices, about 1/3 of the second floor, and the entire third floor.
-what if the hallways had been appropriately scaled for high school boys?
-what if the light hadn't been beaming through classroom windows, gradually warming students that were wearing blazers, dress shirts, and khakis?
-what if classrooms were big enough to accommodate overcrowding?
-what if there were enough chairs such that students didn't have to sit at my desk, or at the table by the overhead projector?
-what if the school wasn't tucked away on a side street surrounded by abandoned lots and housing projects?
i could probably list about 30 things here. but what if?
