2023 RRSLA Internship Blog

How's it goin, it feels like the days go by pretty quick with the short evenings off and the workflow has kept me pretty busy on my end.  Besides the usual cad work on redlines, I have been so lucky as to have been given a whole residential site to play with. I went to the initial site visit a couple weeks ago for this project and besides the facilitation overall, I have been pretty much on my own generating the planting plan and designs.  Our firm rarely does residential and for this reason, they have been willing to turn something like this over to me.  This has been a wake-up call to how dry it is in the west and how different you need to think about forms and massing with this sparse plant palette, but the firm has been good for letting me take time to learn these plants as I go.  Besides this project, we have an interns project across the offices that is shaping up to be a mini capstone by the end of June as well as 20 hours of AutoCAD training they will allow u...

 Hi everyone!  Starting my 6th week at CWDG this week and things have really picked up the pace. I'm attending/helping present at public meetings this week so I've got that to look forward to! My supervisor is out of town (in Mexico!!) so I've been somewhat left to the wolves and everyone is piling stuff on my plate, in addition to the work load I already had, so we'll see how this goes, but I think I can manage. I'm currently working on projects in CAD, photoshop, Indesign, Illustrator, and soon to be Sketchup, plus hand drawing some concepts, so really getting to hone all my skills here. We we're supposed to have a Dish and Dirt tomorrow with one of our principles about hand drawings, but it's been canceled due to "extreme inclement weather" so I'm really looking forward to my walk to/home from work.  Picture of a turkey I saw when on a site visit the other day. Apparently, there are lots here and they even come into the city especially when ...

heyyy I've been at OJB for over a month now. We just finished working on that huge lumion project. After my last post, I was tasked with animating the people and putting the effects together for a 4-5 minute video. The client wanted a video for advertising purposes to sell the design to donors and future tenants. It was so cool to work on something that is in the process of being built. Everything in that model is true to our CD's, which is out of the ordinary. It will be cool to visit in a few years to see the real thing!! I'll post a link to the video and renderings once I get permission.  Other than that, my time over the past two weeks has been in InDesign and excel. I'm working on an InDesign template for our plant palletes. My job is to research and compile information on the top 100+ plants we use in our Texas projects and format them in InDesign so when the next project presentation is being put together, they can just copy over the information and pictures of t...

 Hi, welcome back to my blog. I took my first few days off last week which was super nice. I was able to just spend the extended weekend with my family in Grand Isle and I realllly enjoyed that especially because the weather has been so nice as its warming up a bit.  We sent those concepts off to the people for the park in Lafayette and will finally get some feedback on them tomorrow which I am really excited about. We will get to do that in person since well already be in the area for a stakeholder meeting for a shared neighborhood park/community hub area nearby. I feel that Nairn Park has prepared me for this moment lol. Also I have been placed on a project they are starting, to revitalize Houma's downtown/mainstreet streetscape. I am looking forward to that one because its close to home!  I feel I am quickly becoming a professional at pulling precedents, credentials below:  my ava can now smile for pics :)  ornamental cabbage  mil ps: dan you have inspir...

The last two weeks went pretty well for me. Chasing the deadline was really fun without pressure anymore. We were putting together the presentation board for meeting with clients and working on many conceptual designs and detailed drawings. Noticeably, the weather is so gross in Boston at present! rainy, windy, and snowy all day, which made my body unable to get adopted quickly, so I finally got sick 😵. Hoping the weather gets a little bit warmer, so I can feel a lot better and enjoy the trip to the beach,...

 I have no idea what week it is but I'm still really enjoying my time at the Office of State Parks. I've started designing/creating a master plan for the town of Washington, La so that's cool. I've also been doing a lot of site visits, some even on my own which is scary but fun. Today some coworkers and I visited Sam Houston Jones which is beautiful and has brand new cabins which was nice to see. We also stopped by Lake Fausse and saw 2 gators which was pretty cool. I'm pretty sure one was at least 8 feet and they're just chilling right outside some cabins. It's been a fun weekend here with Mardi Gras going on. Hope y'all got to eat some king cake and hope y'all are enjoying y'alls time away.  -Julia                              This is a live oak I saw at Fontainebleau Park, one of the biggest I've ever seen More Fontainebleau                ...

 The past two weeks have consisted of a good bit of site measuring, client meetings, and AutoCAD. I am actually enjoying the site measuring (except when it's cold) because it gives me a break from the computer. I did another design for a small enhancement job that I will post. I also put together a quick layout of a side strip of trees for my boss to propose to his client. Other than that I have been working on two residential bases, one of which has caused me headache because of very irregular shapes that we had to try to measure. I finally finished that base and am looking forward to what this week brings. I have off for Mardi Gras tomorrow so that will be nice. The office celebrated with a beer flight guessing game and king cake tastings from around the city. Hope everyone is well and happy Mardi Gras from Louisiana! <3 Commercial Building Entrance Designs  King Cake Tasting in the Office

Hello gang, I hope everyone is feeling well, living their best life as a landscape architect intern. Racking in the dough and riding the flow. This weekend the fam bam came into town and pewww bahhhh we went to town. We went to the Grand Ole Opry House for their 5,462 straight airing. Hall of fame country singer,  "Whispering" Bill Anderson. This man has written 80 number one hits for country music singers. A few new artists also played and a couple more legends like John Connelly and Dean Dylan. The atmosphere was amazing, 10/10 do recommend. My parents and I also went to the Ryman for a backstage tour. The Ryman is known for being the "Mother church of country music" where shows are still performed today. The Grand Ole Opry use to be held there every Saturday night for originally $100 a week. The Ryman was the third location for their performances as their crowds grew larger and rowdier for the newly found bluegrass and hillbilly banjo music with "rockabilly....

 It is very interesting having internship at Design Workshop in Aspen. Working at here has been pretty good. I participated in a lot of interesting projects and learned a lot Everyday, I have lots of work to do. I am helping my project manager to draw some illustrative plan, sections and build model and render it. My project manager is very nice and fun. But when he is working, he is very serious. Something interesting happens every day in our office. When we were having Staff meeting on last Monday, a deer came and looked at us outside the meeting room window. And I saw a very cute fox in the backyard on last Thursday. They are really funny and cute. I went to ski yesterday. It is more difficult than I think. I spent lots of time to learn how to stop and turn around. And I fell many times, but I finally learned it. Although it is hard to learn, but it is really interesting and fun. After skiing, I went to hot spring. It is pretty good to go to hot spring after skiing. Because...

I was offered the opportunity to stay on until August, which I accepted. I'm looking forward to warmer weather.   I've been doing lots of photoshop lately, but I get a break from that to do some CD's soon. Our office does not use Landfx, but they are getting it this year and will start using it soon. I'm trying to convince them to get Nearmap while they're at it.  My apartment is a 15 minute walk from one of the most scenic viewpoints on the lake, so I do that hike pretty often now.  I went snowshoeing yesterday, and it was probably in the top 5 best hikes I've ever done. I'm 80% sure I was following bear tracks at one point, but it was a very cool experience otherwise.   I'm looking forward to seeing my family this week. They are coming up for a few days to ski, so it will be fun to show them around.  Top of Cave Rock (The next few are from the snowshoe hike) Emerald Bay I took the wrong (steep) route up to the summit. I later found out this is where ...

      Greetings! It's your local cad monkey here reporting live from San Diego. This city continues to amaze me with its incredible scenery, delicious food, and great people. I seem to be fitting in real well here so far. Work is pretty good, i'm still adjusting to sitting behind a desk for 8 hours a day. I've mostly worked on construction documents since ive got here which im a bit bummed on, but hopefully as work picks up a bit i'll have the opprotunity to explore other programs. I am super stoked to say i caught my first wave this moring while surfing, soon ill be shreding the knar like my boy Cody Maverick. Other than that all is well and i hope you all are also having transformative experiences as well!  Unil next time... i'll leave you with a few recent pictures.                                          ...

    Hope everybody is doing great and enjoying their internship.     On Friday I was the only person in the landscape department. My boss was having maintenance done on his house and my coworker took off. My coworker works 60+ hours a week. So, it was nice to see him take a day off and go up north, to visit his folks in Tampa. My boss left me two pump stations to make changes per the codes of the City of Cape Coral. The projects are in a neighborhood, but they were first drafted to meet codes for a nonresidential site, since a residences will not be built on the plot. CCC got back to the firm and redlined the design to meet residential code, since the plot was zoned to be residential. The changes were not too bad with Land F/X. It did takes sometime to change the text of the codes in Excel and relink the text to paper space.  One Of The Pump Stations     I worked on the second portion of Alico Road. I was given total freedom to design the nearly 2 mile...