2023 RRSLA Internship Blog

     Hey nerds, hope y'all are doing well and adjusting into your new homes. It's been different not seeing you guys everyday, I miss the camaraderie and the company that school brings. Anyways, I'm starting my third week working for the Office of State Parks and I am thoroughly enjoying it. The atmosphere of downtown is really historic and it makes me feel very important, almost like I'm a politician. I even had to get a badge to let me into my building which I quickly found out gives me access to every building downtown, even the capitol. The type of work we do in my office is more of organizing inventory in the parks and figuring out what maintenance needs to be done and what amount of money we need to ask the state for in order to see proper repairs done. We also go on a lot of site visits, at least once a week. The site visits are either to see what issues there are or to look at the site and talk about potential new projects for the parks. The type of projects tha...

 Hey everyone, hope you are all enjoying your internships so far. I started at LeBlanc Jones here in Boston last week and am really enjoying it so far. It's a small office and we primarily work on high-end residential projects in and around New England, so it's definitely an interesting change from things I have worked on previously in school or at my previous internship. So far I've had the opportunity to render a photoshop plan for a residence south of Boston, and I have also been working on Lumion renderings for a residential project in Cape Cod. Also enjoying living in Boston. I can walk to work from my apartment and can also easily access things without needing a car. The cold weather has definitely been an adjustment but honestly hasn't been as bad as I was expecting it to be. Also have been able to hang out with Madison and Thai while I've been here. Overall, really enjoying the opportunity to experience living in a different region of the country and learn n...

       Two week mark here in Solona Beach. Having a great time with my pal Jones. The weather here is great and i've seen some of the craziest plants in my life. We have been trying all the local food spots here in O'side and so far we keep coming back to the same taco place. Super yummy. OJB is pretty sweet. All of my coworkers have been super nice and welcoming. A group of us are going on a camping trip next friday so i'll be sure to let you all know how that goes. They also gave me some work and i did it. Right on. 7/10 so far. Anyways hope you guys are having a good time.  Till next week my friends. SL                                                                                         

 Hi everyone! I arrived in Aspen and had my internship at Design Workshop on Jan 16th. It is the second week of work. The weather in Aspen is very cold and dry. But the snow scene is very beautiful. Because of my unsuitability for the cold weather at the beginning, I got a fever and cold. It is so cold outside and I have to wear a warm hat and a thick scarf to protect myself. But it is a novel experience for me to live in such cold weather. Now I have gradually adapted to the dry cold air and recovered from the fever. It snowed a lot yesterday. After the snow stopped, my friend and I built a snowman. Although, Aspen is famous for Skiing. I haven't tried it yet. Let me get used to the cold air and try skiing. I really love working in Design Workshop. I am responsible for drawing an illustrative plan for a residential project. It is really good and interesting. My teammate taught me a very quick way to draw the plan. I think it is very useful. Also, we have a design re...

It's Week 3, b*tches.  I will soon send an update on the fantasy garden draft thing I mentioned in the last post. Other than that, I am mostly setting up documents and doing details. No site visits this week :(... But I have a whole weekend ahead of me. Today, I am finally getting a haircut, and I will see a dermatologist soon about the mysterious skin disease I now have. I am having weekly calls in French with my language-learning partner, Chloë, across the Atlantic. That is nice.  There are two larger-than-life characters at work, including one of the principals, Mark. Always a jokester, teaser, and heckler, that one is. He is very funny to be around, since he is always picking on people in a friendly, humorous way. I have been forgetting to take photos, but I do have a few: Jason and I stopping to smell the flowers A cool plugin on Vectorworks called AutoTURN. You can drive around a digital car and see if there is enough space to park it. It's like how kids play with toy tr...

Just finished my second week of work! So far so good. Traveling up to San Diego was incredible. Me and 3 friends traveled up together and spent time in San Antonio, Silver City, Flagstaff, and Sedona before making it to Southern California. Once here, I moved into the house that I'm renting with Sawyer and explored. I went to LA for a hockey game, visited La Jolla cove to see some seals, and went to the San Diego Safari Park. Work has been great so far. We are starting to get oriented to their system and standards. I have mainly worked in CAD editing construction documents, but I will get to work on some Lumion models next week. Everyone in the office is really kind and super helpful. It's also nice that the office is just a few minute drive from the beach. Sitting by the beach makes the best lunch breaks. I also just got a wetsuit and surf board and plan to try out surfing for the first time this weekend. Wish me luck!!

Hi everyone! I hope you're all settling in to your new routines well! I know this move has been a big adjustment for me since I've never lived in cold weather and am so very far from my friends and family, but so far it's been good! City life is better than I would have ever expected and really don't have any complaints, just a lot of adjusting to do. Luckily I know a few people here which has helped make the transition smoother. Being in the North End, there are lots of restaurants, things to do, and I can walk to work and the gym! I'm counting down the months until the warmer weather so I actually get to enjoy more of the city and the changing of the seasons.  Here is a picture of my landlord and my dad in my new kitchen that my dad specifically requested to be shared: Today was the last day of my first week of work and it's off to a good start! They haven't thrown me into too much yet, but I'm getting put on three brand new projects (to me and the fir...

 Three weeks have gone by since I began working in Confluence's Denver office. The office itself is in an interesting mixed-use development with other architects and businesses in the vicinity.  The Denver office has 4 younger landscape designers and 3 senior principals, as well as a digital studio (these guys mostly operate out of their own homes here in Denver and work on renders for the other offices). This firm uses SketchUp for 3D modeling, and I have begun to practice some with this. Other than that I mostly bounce between AutoCAD, InDesign, and photoshop to work on different steps of different landscape projects and some marketing work.  The newest project we have is on the site of the former quarry in Connecticut from which New York and Boston supplied their brownstone.  It is rare to have a project so far east but the customer intends to open Nordic spas across North America and Confluence has been the designer for this client's projects before which have be...

 Hello! I’m finishing up my second week at Mullin and so far everything has been great! I’ve done a few small designs, some site measuring, attended client sales meetings, and some autocad bases. I worked on two small flower beds for businesses’ entrance signs and a residential property. The two signs were simple designs that had a set number of certain size/gallon plants in their budget. The residential client is a a new build and landscape only. The client basically wanted to fill his backyard with a “jungely” feel. I also have gotten to see a few current residential projects in progress. I’ve been treated to some nice lunches and am enjoying getting to know everyone in the office. Excited for week 3!  Hope everyone is well! 

Well, so far my biggest take-away is that this whole 9-5 work life is such a huge, draining adjustment though I am grateful that there is no homework/your afternoons are yours yk? We have actually done a good bit of traveling during my first two weeks. I went to Ruston one day to look at a recently completed project to create what I learned is called a Punch List of things needed to be fixed by the construction crew so that they could be paid what was kept on retainer. That was an 8 hour round trip which wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, and since I drove I will be getting paid milage which is also a new concept to me. Other that that I have been helping prepare for a stakeholder/focus group meeting for a pocket park we will be designing soon. We went to Lafayette on Friday and showed community members precedent photos as well as got an idea of what they are looking for to be done with/in the space. I am looking forward to seeing this project through as well as continuing to ...

Hi all, Work is work lately, but I can't complain. Just purchased a copy of the Communist Manifesto, if that's any indication of the mental space I'm in. Learning Vectorworks slowly and surely. I have this inferiority complex I probably picked up as a child where I feel useless if I am not being productive, so I try not to let that get in the way of my thriving and jiving. So far all residential projects and some small commercial, and I am mostly doing details. On Friday, I went and took some FIELD MEASUREMENTS, and it was great to be outside. Then I accompanied another coworker to another site visit just to check up on the progress. I am also working on a very miscellaneous project for one of our principal's presentations as a guest speaker. We are putting together a Fantasy-Baseball-style "garden draft." I am making baseball cards with plants on them basically. Very neat. I will try to remember to post an image when it is done. In the last two days, I have m...

   Vanderbilt Beach, Naples      Florida is in busy season right now. The snowbirds, northerns that want to get away from the snow/cold weather up north come down south for a few months, are noticeable with how busy SWF has been. Busy season will be over late March/April. So, I will have a few months to be able to get around SWF without all the traffic.      I went around the office a few weeks ago asking for everybody's favorite restaurant between Tampa and Naples. So, I have been trying a few of those places on the weekend. My coworker graduated from LSU in 2013. We went to a restaurant two Fridays ago and saw the sunset from a hotel the firm designed the landscape. I have been enjoying the firm. The firm is mostly an engineering firm, but land planning, land development, environmental assessments/permit compliance, construction engineering and inspection, ecological/environmental consulting, electrical engineering, GIS, landscape architecture, ...

 Houston, we have a new intern!       I've been at OJB for about a week now, and I've already learned so much! I've been working on two projects getting experience in sketchup and cad. One project is focusing on the inventory and analysis of a site in Kansas City, the other is a community in the schematic design phase. I've been mostly learning Sketchup... I've been taking linework from vectorworks, simplifying it in cad, and formatting it in Sketchup to then take into lumion to decorate and render. I signed an NDA so I'm not sure how many details I can share about my current projects... so professional... 🤩          I haven't yet explored Houston as much as I had hoped. I'm currently living in downtown, in a renovated hotel that is a 5 minute walk from the office. I'm so grateful that I get to walk to work, especially with all that I've heard about the traffic here. Before I started working, Carlos gave me a tour of the Houston tunnels...

 Hey gang, hope you all are doing well and excited to get paid to learn for once. Today is the start of my third week here at BFT Land Design in Brentwood TN. It has been fun from the get-go and even got to go on a field trip with Riley to the new largest soccer only stadium in the country, Geodis Park. The stadium is state of the art but what is really neat are the opportunities it has created from affordable living, jobs, community engagement from the building process to the activities now going on such as sports compounds for kids, music venue, camps, etc. Co-workers are super fun and nice which helps for questions. I am using strictly CAD for formatting surveys that come in, adjust drawings to be centered off of doorways and other baselines. Doing overall layouts of boss man's design, calling companies to get dwgs and pdfs.....first time actually feeling like an intern was last Friday when I put furniture together for half the day. Got paid for it so who's really the silly ...

This was actually my third week here at BFT Land Design in Brentwood. We focus almost entirely on high end residential so what I've been doing is creating 3d renders for a house that sits on 150 acres of hilly woodlands (see images). All the modeling took an estimated 15 hours and it's going to have to be redone because the client wants to make some major changes regarding FFE and grading.  Other than that I've been doing mostly construction documents and details. As most of you know, Evan and I work together so we grabbed dinner and beers at a meat and three pub; was pretty good. They're redoing our office complex so for the past 3 weeks I've been watching them poor concrete and install permeable pavers for parking spaces from my office window.  That's all I have, nothing glamorous but I'm enjoying it. 

Hello folks! Here's a summary of what I've been up to since leaving BR. After 5 days and 2,100 miles on the road, I made it to Lake Tahoe with just a few hours to spare before a bad snow storm. I caravanned with Jonah and some friends to Flagstaff, Arizona then drove the rest of the way to Nevada. We saw some pretty amazing places along the way.  My first week of work was great! The office is quite small (9 people), so I already feel immersed. On MLK Jr Day as a service project, our office had a design charette for a playground at the local Boys and Girls Club. We visited the site and gathered design ideas from the staff and kids. It was a fun, fast project and a good opportunity to meet everyone right away. Since then, I've been doing plan renderings, site analysis, and conceptual design for two other projects. Design Workshop has so many training resources and templates that make the tasks not so overwhelming.  The weather is finally clearing up this weekend, so I'm h...

Hello everyone! I hope you are all enjoying the transition from the 24/7 grind of school to the profitable life of an intern where you get to actually leave your work behind and make money from your sweat and tears. I know I am! The move back to Orlando was an easy one, and I have settled into a quaint airbnb not too far from the University of Central Florida. The room is smaller than the one at my home in Baton Rouge, but it comes with a queen bed. I have never owned a bed larger than a twin, so you can best believe I'm living like a king!  Starting back at PBD was quite informal and quick, with my associates wasting little time on pleasantries and immediately putting me on my first project. The project that I have been mainly working on the past two weeks has been a port in Yucatan, Mexico.  Originally, the clients received a concept package from an architecture firm and came to us for landscape architectural services. However, the architecture firm's design was simply too c...

 What's up, dawgs? I've been at Word + Carr (WCDG) for 4 days now. Struck with how young the average age of the firm is, and the principals are in their thirties, probably. I can't imagine starting a firm like that at such a young age. I have had to learn how to use a Mac, since that is the standard here. Also, everything we do on the computer is in Vectorworks, so I will have to add that to the ol' toolbelt. It is nice to have an opportunity to learn these new things, but it can also be frustrating because I no longer can operate with the proficiency I have built during these past years of school. Otherwise, Austin is great. Excellent ecstatic dance group. Good parks, but none of them have a good pullup bar. Speaking of, I asked about gym membership benefits, and WCDG got me free access to an awesome nearby gym. I definitely had to take the initiative on this, so consider asking about benefits if your firm's upper management has not mentioned anything.  My first ti...