#394 - Your Architecture Degree Isn't A Dead End

0:00Evan Troxel: Yesterday I was on a construction tour and I saw a couple of former students. One wasn't actually in my studio but was in the year level of the other student that was. And so we just got to kind of talking after the tour was over. What did you like about the tour? Was there anything interesting about it? You know, I even kind of lamented it was just like these are the kind of things I would love to be able to do more often in studio. is to take students to see construction tours, to kind of understand the complexities of all of the things that we keep asking them to put in their projects so that they understand the complexities of buildings and all that other stuff.

0:43Evan Troxel: And so as we kept talking and stuff, and I was listening to them talk about what they liked and didn't like about the building that we were looking at, I had asked them, well, where are you all working? You know, how are you enjoying the profession? Because this was my, these were students from my very first semester of teaching. So they've already graduated with their master's degree and they've, they're already, they are now officially 100 % in the profession. No more school, no more nothing. Emerging professionals. Emerging professionals. And I'm getting to the, I'm getting to the question, but I needed to set the stage.

1:20Cormac Phalen: How did you know what I was thinking, Cormac? I needed to set the stage.

1:24Evan Troxel: And so the one person who was in my studio, she was like, I'm really enjoying it. I'm learning a lot. And I really kind of enjoy doing this. I'm like, great. That's fantastic. Then there was a guy with them that was basically their year level, new emerging professional. and he leaves again i didn't know him but he kind of offered a piss about his opinion about it then i got to the other person who was from the university she said she hates hates everything about it hated it when she was in school and everybody but she was a really good student let me let me just preface it all but you're really basically explaining my wife like this was her experience as well really really good student hated school hated everything about it and hated And hates the profession.

2:19And so the question is, and since you have firsthand knowledge of this and experience from inside the, the call's coming from inside the house.

2:31Evan Troxel: Yeah. What do you do now? I've had this experience with a couple of other young emerging professionals that I've worked with in the past. What do you do when you've gone through five years of school, six years of school in their case? and you didn't like it when you were in school but you thought as everybody's told you oh don't worry the profession is gonna be a whole whole lot different you'll like it when you're out in the profession and then you get into the profession and you're like nope I really don't like it here either and and I went I dug a little bit deeper and I was just like we were standing in downtown Detroit.

3:14Evan Troxel: And there's, you know, a whole gamut of different types of architecture. So nice turn of the century, beautifully detailed architecture. There's these, the new building that we were just leaving and then everywhere in between. And I was just like, well, you know, look at this. She's like, yeah, nothing, there's nothing speaking to me there. It, it, it, it is falling on deaf ears to me. What do you do now? I, I offered up some advice and we could talk about that as we go along but what do you do if you've gone through all of that schooling and you just don't like what you chose to do that's the question i don't i don't think that this is abnormal and i don't think it would be it should be labeled as such it's absolutely not really i totally agree with you there's so many things you could do because as you probably were about to say in what i told her was there, it was like you would not believe the multitude of different things that you can do inside and outside of the profession with this degree.

4:23Evan Troxel: That does not mean that you have to follow the traditional path of architects.

4:27Cormac Phalen: So, I mean, one of the most concerning things is with your follow-up, right? Which is like none of this is speaking to me. And I think you kind of have to get into some stuff to see if it speaks to you rather than just judge it all from the surface, right? Right, right. And because I think extra weight could be putting into the feeling of the situation based on current environment and context. And so if there's really kind of a – you wake up and you have this kind of sense of dread about going to work that day, that's very different than the architecture around me isn't speaking to me in any way.

5:10Cormac Phalen: Right? Right. Like those are two very different things. And I think both of those could be addressed. I'm not trying to minimize the way the person is feeling because you do have to sit. You have to go inside and be like, okay, where is that feeling in me? And then try to figure out why it's there. And I think the only way you can do that is have that really honest conversation with yourself. And the point isn't even to your point to say start over because maybe that's not an option. And so I think it could become an option at some point, but I don't think that's the immediate answer, which is like, go do something else completely.

5:50Evan Troxel: Yeah. Well, I think I think some of her friends, in fact, you know, one of the the other student, she she had thought that that was the course of action that she had to take is like, oh, you know, oh, my God, you just finished, you know, six years of school. You've got your master's degree now and, you know, you're going to have to just start all over again. And I was like, not necessarily. I mean, there are so many things that, you know, a degree in architecture, you know, a multitude of different doors can be open. And it's just, you know, gaining experience, gaining, you know, and I told her I was like, one of the great things about both in the profession, in school, going to, as we said, a couple of episodes ago, when you go to these conferences and stuff, and you meet a bunch of people, and so you're building this network.

6:36Evan Troxel: I mean, you can network out and find other things. And of course, some of the things that I told her is like, you've got to listen to X podcast and Y podcast, one X being Troxel and Y actually being out of architecture. And go and listen to these because there's a lot of people on your other podcasts that were in the profession that found a life outside of the direct profession that still are having impacts on the profession that you couldn't do if you were just a regular architect. It doesn't sound right, but anyway, just a regular architect. And then there's others. There's like, okay, well, maybe you don't necessarily want to be in the AAC industry, but you've got this degree.

7:20Evan Troxel: What can you do? There's so many adjacents. There's so many adjacents, like real estate, like interior design.

7:28Cormac Phalen: There's a lot of options, I think when it comes to working in and around the built environment where you would be bringing that expertise that you got in school to a different point of view and you would actually be adding something there rather than being one of the same kind of points of view within that sphere of influence.

7:48Evan Troxel: I asked them yesterday, and this is how I kind of got to some other, you know, kind of just pulling more information out of hers. Just like, were you ever, I was like, did you ever ask yourself or were you asked? Because I've done this, I did this, you know, last semester with my younger students. I asked them, why architecture? It's like, this is not an easy profession. You know, this is not, you know, like something that you just choose, you know, randomly. Oh, my gosh.

8:19Cormac Phalen: Dude, I just got off a phone call yesterday with somebody who's been in it for a long time who is very disenfranchised. So, yeah, it's. Yeah. And ask those questions early.

8:29Evan Troxel: Oh, yeah. And ask the question. I mean, is, you know, is this the path you want to go on? And, you know, and it's actually, to be quite honest with you, this is probably the best time for her to be asking herself that question. You know, if you can have asked it before, if you never asked it before. Right. So the next. Exactly. The next best time is now. You know, and I can say that, you know, there's plenty of times when people, you know, would say, why architecture to me? And I'm just like, you know, how long do you have? You know, I can give that.

9:01Cormac Phalen: And part of it is, I mean, I could ask the questions like, well, like, what is it that really, so it started in school, but now like what's keeping it that way? Right. Because it could be the people you work with. It could be the kinds of projects you're on. It could be the culture of the office. There's variable upon variable here.

9:20Evan Troxel: Yeah, yeah. And all of that is, you know, the more and more I get into architecture and the more and more I get exposed to things outside of and architecturally adjacent and stuff, the more and more it kind of just reaffirms that this is what I want to do. But it is also one of those things that I sought out and looked after, looked towards getting into, looked forward to getting into, thrived when I was in school and felt like I've pretty well thrived in one way, shape or form since I've been out. Now, that means that, you know, I've always been asking that question. And for somebody like her, or even like your wife, that they asked the question, or they hadn't asked the question, but then they got into the profession said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is not quite what I want to do.

10:14Cormac Phalen: um and you know when you know when i felt that seriously the last time i really felt this was during the are process oh my god it's like it's not worth it it's not worth it at that point for

10:25Evan Troxel: me and i did it anyway what was what's funny though is like think about when you took the ares and take think about when i took the ares and how far out of school we were when we actually finally got around to doing that and then to say oh man should i really should i really be doing this like or do i want to really do this um yeah you know it's just kind of it it was so it struck me as is is an interesting just kind of like you know question to to ask is like you know i mean really in a way i'd love to just ask everybody why architecture because again you know like if if you're he i always promised myself and i think i've told this story before there was this guy when in my very very first internship and i would come into work you know here i am the internal bright-eyed bushy-tailed you know like just you know here let's go you know let's go into the world and create this guy complained every single solitary day it was explicative this explicative bad i mean i mean everything dude it was just a bad attitude and it wasn't like look i've had bad days or a bad project or a bad client where you know i may complain about it but projects come and go clients come and go you know just that bad day comes and goes and you just move on you know it's just like well sometimes we ask ourselves absolutely ask ourselves why are we doing this You know, why do I, why do I put myself through this?

12:02Evan Troxel: And then there's that. Because things are hard, right?

12:04Cormac Phalen: Like life is hard, work is hard. And like, yeah, you are put in that position because it's not the ideal state.

12:10Evan Troxel: And so how many times do you and I then figure out a way or a time or a place or whatever to say, oh, yeah, this is why I do this? Whether it's a reaction from a client or you go into a building, you're like, oh, my God, this is amazing. Those are farther and fewer between though, right? Like those are the punctuation in the sentences. No. I mean, to me, I also, I absolutely love going into, you know, the university and going to the architecture studio and just see all of these, the ambition and the drive and the love for getting into some of the new challenge and seeing the looks on their face.

12:48Evan Troxel: And so I've got the new something to invigorate me in the teaching aspect of things. But yeah. Yeah.

12:55Cormac Phalen: For a regular architect, that might be the next project or a new client or a pursuit. And so I think there is kind of this striving for what's next and better and seeing the possibility. I really don't think you're going to thrive in architecture unless you're an optimist in that way. I feel like true thriving the sense I'm getting from you and your attitude is through this striving for better, what's that next thing what's the thing that's really going to fuel me energetically so that I can look forward to whatever that is but then there is a real calling out of the day to day, there are things that are just extremely challenging and difficult, but also makes it worth it through that accomplishment of doing those hard things.

13:52Cormac Phalen: Right, right.

13:54Evan Troxel: You said striping, and then, of course, I just thought of the little Netflix Formula One thing. I was just like, thriving to survive, or thrive to survive.

14:05Cormac Phalen: You need a good tagline. We need marketing taglines to make it through. There you go. Well, okay, so just to go back to my better halves situation, she's never solved this issue. There's definitely things that she's passionate about that are outside of architecture. And there's also this very real, like, I spent a lot of money on this. Like, I am in a lot of debt because of this decision. But like the example you're sharing, didn't like it during school. like had a different idea of what it was versus the reality of what it was learn that through school stuck with it because she's not a quitter and and like oh just just it actually zaps her energy it actually sucks it out it's like it leaves her lifeless in that way and she hasn't found a recipe for happiness in it at all and would rather do anything but this right and so she's not doing it so she's not doing it um and i also i would also make the case that if i think you have to put in some due diligence into this to see yeah i really like your your idea about the out of architecture podcast and the community there because because the education is so useful in so many other ways.

15:31Cormac Phalen: And at the same time, you put in that due diligence and literally if you can't find any redeeming qualities, do not do it. Do not put your life into a thing that sucks your energy and zaps you. Oh, absolutely. Because how are you going to be a great contributing citizen if that's the state that you're in all the time?

15:56Evan Troxel: because you know i was thinking and i was as i was you know telling my wife this and and we were talking about it it's just like you know you you do all of this and then you go into work every day and you absolutely hate it and you don't like what you're doing and stuff you're obviously not doing any good for yourself good for your emotional well-being yeah but but then there's that then there's you're not doing good for the project good for the client good for the the team around you you know I mean you may come in and try to be as positive as possible but you know that that feeling is going to leach out of you and you know the just like oh I can't believe I'm still here

16:34Cormac Phalen: I can't can we just talk about how important attitude is and I am not just talking about architecture I mean in all situations there are so many times especially recently as this has just become more and more apparent to me when i see a bad attitude it literally i hate to actually use even the literally word it's it's so overused but it's like one of those things where it's like a guarantee every time yeah oh that just drained me dealing with that person in exactly it's it's a

17:05Evan Troxel: complete opposite when it's a good attitude like their negative attitude so i'll give you a couple of examples of just this. And I mention this to my kids every time. Let's just say we go through a drive-thru and we're ordering food.

17:19Cormac Phalen: The difference of a good somebody there is stark.

17:23Evan Troxel: Exactly. It's just like if you go through and you just have this angry attitude that comes across the speaker and you just, yeah, what do you want? And whatever it is. What do you want? And then you go to another place, and I'll say that I think it's company policy, whether they are fighting through Chick-fil-A. I'm calling it. That they are positive and chipper and cheery and they thank you.

17:55Cormac Phalen: I wonder how much of the hiring process is based on attitude alone.

17:59Evan Troxel: You know what? But I always tell my kids, like, you've got to understand. You choose the job. They didn't choose. I mean, yes, they hired you. They interviewed you. But I mean, you choose the job. So you should just go. I mean, you chose to apply to this job, get this job, do this job. So do it as best as you can. Come in with a good attitude and just do it. Even if you don't like it, you chose to do it. If you choose that you don't want to do it, then we're right back to where we started this conversation. Then it's your decision to figure out what to do next. So in the studio, I have worked with people with a bad attitude.

18:41Cormac Phalen: And what I would call like just there's a black rain cloud hovering over them. Right. And so there's a shadow on my face right here. Yeah. Yeah. That is contagious because it's like, OK, if I can get somebody else commiserating with me. OK, now it's two. And now it's just.

19:00Evan Troxel: Yes, it does. It grows.

19:02Cormac Phalen: It grows. And then it becomes like, well, this is the normal culture of the studio, which is at some point it becomes, oh, everybody's complaining about stuff all the time. And it's amazing when either that is removed from the equation or we become very aware of it to make a change about it, how much things shift and how fast they shift in a different direction. Right. Have you seen that in studios, too, or even in school? Like in school where you've got a bunch of students and if you've got one, I bet you can sense it.

19:36Evan Troxel: So the studios that I've been involved with in school, they're typically group projects. And that is, you know, this is their introduction to working in teams. and the first semester that I was working there and I think a few friends of the show that you know one of them I know for a fact listens will and teaches with me will attest to the fact that it was a it was a horrible semester there were so there was there were teams that worked great and even if there was maybe one or two people within that team that wasn't terribly strong they were you know the team kind of like gathered around them to help them and it was just a positive energy within the team then there were other teams that they were just fought like cats and dogs and we're always arguing and even in our reviews when we would just sit down and talk about architecture that well this was their idea and none of us really like it and so we just let them go ahead and do it but now we're stuck with this and and then it was just like and then they just start spickering back and forth it's like well if you could do it then you should have done it but since nobody was doing it i did you know it was just this weird like negativity and you just watch it and you just watch it and we you know in no matter how much we tried to like teach through that or you know try to explain to them about like you know teamwork within the profession and How even if you don't maybe have like the strongest of team members, keeping some keeping a positive energy around it is it's you definitely get used to it.

21:22Evan Troxel: I think we can we can safely say no one is going to be as good as you are on a project in your mind, in your mind. If you just please, oh, I can't believe they did that. I wouldn't have done that. I mean, how many times has everybody, everybody said that about somebody else when they're doing group work or stuff? And instead of using it as a learning opportunity to say, okay, they may not know exactly everything that I want, you know, that I need them to know. Okay, this is an opportunity to teach them. Or they don't do it the way that I do it. Okay, well, if you want a certain outcome, guess what you got to do?

22:05Evan Troxel: you've got to teach them. I mean, it's all of these opportunities to mentor, to help people grow, to, you know, or maybe just maybe put down your ego for a little while and say, okay, this is the way that I wanted it to be done, but I see that you're doing it this way. And you know what? It's not a bad way to do it. And it might be easier, you know, learn something from somebody

22:30Cormac Phalen: I'm almost certain that an ego has never helped a situation. Almost certain. Almost every condition. What's the saying? The saying is like you're only as smart as like your five closest, you know, confidants, friends, whatever you want to say. You know, be careful who you surround yourself with.

22:51Evan Troxel: Cool.

22:51Cormac Phalen: In a way that the thing that I think that starts to point to, which is not a new idea, is that you want to be the dumbest one in the room. You don't want to be seen as even the smartest one in the room because then what do you have to learn? And so if you're going into a situation where, okay, I'm going to surround my people with something I strive to become in some way. There's some characteristic or some trait in that situation. And so when you're looking for a job or you're looking for a team or when you're trying to assemble that team to accomplish a certain task, that's what you want to strive for, if at all possible.

23:31Cormac Phalen: You don't always have control over that, but you then need to look for those opportunities in that situation to be the one who is willing to always be learning. And never the person that says, I've got all the answers. I mean, that's one of the things about being an architect that I think really shifted for me at some point, which was I think at some level, clients expect you to have a lot of answers.

23:54Evan Troxel: Oh, yeah.

23:55Cormac Phalen: Yeah. But at the same time, you have to be willing to say, I don't know. I'm going to find out. Right. And I think that applies on the day to day in your work team as well or in your school team. Now, how hard is that for an architect, though? It's really hard.

24:14Evan Troxel: In your experience.

24:15Cormac Phalen: Well, you've been trained. You have been trained to do it all yourself and to have all the answers and the justifications and the reasons. Yeah, for sure.

24:25Evan Troxel: It is hard. You know, it's like, have you thought about this? Of course I have. Or do you know this? Of course I do. I'm going to make something up right now. Or can you do this? Of course I can, you know.

24:35Cormac Phalen: And there's positive traits to that, too. There's positive outcomes to that. Like, oh, can you do this? I've never done that before. But, yeah, I'm willing to try. Right? and being honest but i but part of it is really being self-aware and saying oh yeah yeah like is this ego really serving me right or is it just pissing people off and making me look like an a-hole

24:54Evan Troxel: you know i yeah that's more often the case in in you you're talking about developing a team in which you look for i mean everybody including the project managers or the project executive or whoever is the leadership of the project, everybody should be coming into that as an eager sponge, if I can get it out. You know, it's everybody's one. What is the opportunity that we have in front of us? What can we all learn together? I'm always asking people at the beginning of a project, what do you want to get out of this project? What do you personally want to get out of this project you know some people they're early in their career and they want to learn you know hey i'd like to learn exterior detailing or i may have you know i've never done you know program planning before and so you know i want to kind of maybe work with the the program and see how that all lays out and all of that other stuff and learn how to do the schedule Cormac I see what you did well done um but I mean and so you know you've got you know you like everybody should have like an opportunity to grow in the project you know in in it should also be it's like okay well project manager says these are the the basic things that we need to get you know done in this project for this project to be a success but even that project manager should be looking at an opportunity to either improve the workflow or improve the way that, you know, the communication is or whatever.

26:33Cormac Phalen: But let's talk about the reality here. Let's talk about the reality here.

26:37Evan Troxel: Man, why do you got to do that?

26:38Cormac Phalen: Inside baseball time, Cormac, what do you do when you send somebody an assignment of accomplishing a certain task on a project? Let's just say it's a detail or something. and it comes back not at all like you would expect maybe somebody of their level to have been able to achieve. Maybe they didn't ask any questions. And there's a lot of what you see is a teaching opportunity or at least a mentorship opportunity and you don't have time to do it. Like, okay, so what goes through your mind at that moment? Because I want to talk about the realities of working in an office. I'm going to tell you what goes through my mouth.

27:21Evan Troxel: Forget my mouth. Because I've learned, seriously, I've learned through so much trial and error that when I'm assigning somebody a task, they may have never done it before or they may be a master at it. I hate that I ask, do you understand what I'm asking you to do? Or can you summarize what I'm asking you to do? I was just like, but please understand, if you've never done it before, this is the time to ask how we accomplish it, what the expectations are. You know, do you need me to go through? Do you need me to show you examples? Do you just, can you do it with maybe me giving you examples? I will try to set them up for success first and not try to set them up for failure.

28:13Evan Troxel: I've done the opposite. You're not just throwing them in the deep end and saying, hey. I learned the opposite. And, you know, you've heard me say, it's like when somebody assigns somebody a task and they have a desired outcome of what that task should be. I mean, I've heard so many times, well, you know, I mean, they're 15 years in their career. They should know what to do. But I've seen people who are 15 years in their career who know exactly what to do. And then they do it the way that they think is the right way to do it and then still get chewed out for not doing it the way the expectation was.

28:50Evan Troxel: And then I asked that person with the so-called anger from the expectation. He was like, did you explain to them exactly what you wanted to? Well, no, they should have known. They knew how to do the job exactly the way that they've done it before in the past. and in what i see they've done is right it's just not the way you wanted it so if you want it super common you know super so if you want it oh absolutely so i was like so if you want it done the way you need it done either you do it yourself or you tell them how you want it done or how you would do it so that it gets to you know it meets that expectation otherwise if it is done and it is correct and it meets like, you know, let's just say that, you know, it's a warrantied detail, you know, warrantable detail and all of that other stuff.

29:41Evan Troxel: What's the problem?

29:43Cormac Phalen: Now, what happens when you give that assignment and you set them up for success and then it still comes back as crap because not because they didn't ask. Well, yeah, because they didn't ask you because they said, I've got it.

29:56Evan Troxel: I had that very issue with a junior emerging professional, and he was very uncomfortable with feeling like he didn't know what he was doing. And also he didn't like that other people thought he didn't know what he was doing. and so when they would assign them a task and they said well you know let's give you a deadline of you know a week to get this stuff done and then at the end of the week you know let's let's get together or in in my case it was just like you know okay you know i've got this this this and do i need you to do this this this and this do you understand yeah yeah i've got i've got it i i know what i'm doing okay and then come back oh you don't know what you're doing and there was a couple of times where you know i just kind of like let it pass i was like okay well you know i'll either fix the detail or i'll have somebody else fix the detail and then you know look for an opportunity to maybe like you know pull him back a little bit and stuff and then but on the one project you know my overseas project that was just so fast track sometimes i couldn't i couldn't come back and check all the time and so there was a lot of times where there's a little bit of frustration festering and all that other stuff.

31:17Evan Troxel: And I, and I decided, I'm like, look, you know, this isn't the right way to be treating this guy. This is not the right way to teach this guy. Like, let's have the conversation. I'm like, look, I don't care if you don't know what you're doing. In fact, I expect you to not know what you're doing. What I expect you to do is ask if you need help and recognize that you need help and feel confident in being able to ask the question and not feel like you're going to get berated or, you know, treated poorly because you don't know the task that you were given. That was, to be quite honest with you, that was like the turning point for both me and most certainly for him.

31:57Evan Troxel: Me as in understand that when you assign something, no, not everybody understands what you're asking them to do. Make sure that you, you know, are, you know, you have that conversation with them. be there for the support, regardless of how, you know, crazy the schedule is and everything else. You know, it is your job at the end of the day. It is your responsibility to make sure it's all done right. And if you're tasking somebody else to do something, you got to make sure that they can do it right. And the only way that they can do it right, if they've never done it before, is do you use that as a teaching and mentoring opportunity to teach them how to do it?

32:37Evan Troxel: so trust me i've lived through it i've i've experienced it on my own you know on on my own the thing that i loved about one of my very first employers in fact actually the very first employer after graduation he would he basically i would say you know hey mike can you you know can you show me how to do this detail he's like he's like he got a lot of books around you you know graphic standards, you've got, you know, the suites catalogs and you've got all these different manufacturing details. Try to pull together the detail as best as you can and then bring it down to me and, you know, we'll, we'll walk through it together.

33:15Evan Troxel: And rather than him just like going off on the handle and saying, oh my God, Cormac, this is absolutely the worst thing that I've ever seen. Why did you draw it this way? You know, this is trash. He basically said, okay, you know, here's, here's where, you know, you went wrong. Here's where this detail does this. Here's where the waterproofing does this. And this is why, you know, this is to do this and had the patience to sit down and teach me how to like go through all these things and learn from my mistakes and learn. And really remember how we always talk about is like, what does that one line mean?

33:45Evan Troxel: That line means something when you draw it, you know, he took the time to actually sit down and say, this line, this shows the waterproofing. If you put this line here, then, you know, here's the path of the water and it's getting into the building and now your wall is leaking. But if you put that line here, guess what? It's keeping the water out. You know, and it's just the simple little things like that just show to me like, oh, okay.

34:10Cormac Phalen: Don't you feel though, like the profession used to have more opportunities for that kind of thing to happen? Yeah. It just, it, I hate to say like this happened to us because on some level we're responsible as well, right? Yeah. Yeah. Or probably more than half of the percentages. But the thing that is hard to come by nowadays is that time to do that, let alone the attitude and the willingness to do it. But the time to.

34:39Evan Troxel: Well, one of the things that I heard, and this is, you know, this could be like the old timer comment and stuff. But one of the old timers, in fact, you know, that boss. Wisdom. Well, you know, so Mike came up to me and he was just like, one of the things that I really don't like about, you know, this switch from hand drafting to CAD is, is like when you had, when you were hand drafting, I saw everything that you were working on on your table. I could walk up and take a look at it and we could be able to like sit there and look together at everything that you're working on. He goes, right now, everybody's zoomed into one little thing and I'm just seeing like a bunch of little lines and stuff like that.

35:19Evan Troxel: And then I say, you know, like, hey, let's zoom out and all that other stuff. So we don't really get a chance to see the same things that we used to see all the time, you know. And so we're so like, you know, in this like, you know, blinders on, tunnel vision, staring right at like the little things that we don't really, you know, how much do we take time to first ourselves zoom in and zoom out, you know, see the macro view and the micro view and they keep going back and forth. with that but then also have other people to look at the macro view of the micro view together and say oh oh hold on you know i just noticed that this was you know doing this and what it really needs to do is this and you know so like there's not even that like level of kind of communication because we're in such a rush to get things done that like you know even the simple q qaing of your own work sometimes falls by the wayside.

36:20Cormac Phalen: Yeah, you're talking literally about coordination, right? Right, right. And coordination is a macro job and it's a micro job. Exactly. And when you are coordinating conditions on a project on a detail sheet to a wall section to a detail, it's like you've got to take all that into account. And here's a huge issue with BIM is coordination is done much more for you, right? Well, coordination is difficult. Like, let's be honest. There's been a lot of things that have gotten missed because you moved a thing over here, you know, on the elevation. And then nothing else updated automatically. You had to go back with your eraser shield and your pencil and redraw it, right?

37:07Cormac Phalen: And that now is solved, and it's solved at various levels, but not all of them, right? And so it's actually made us unintended consequence lazy in that regard, which is the same thing we're seeing nowadays with AI and LLMs, right? Which is accepting the output as it's probably fine, right? It's not something I'm going to spend time checking because it's probably fine. And I'm just saying like this has happened slowly over time.

37:38Evan Troxel: I'll give you this weird little example that I just saw yesterday on that construction tour that I was telling you about. So we're standing outside the project manager from the architect side as well as, you know, somebody from the contracting team. They were out there and they were talking about all those projects and stuff. And I was I'm typically always in the back anyway, because apparently I've got facial expressions. that, you know, I can't hide things.

38:06Cormac Phalen: You can't be front and center. I can't be front and center.

38:09Evan Troxel: You've said too much with that facial expression. Exactly. And so I'm sitting in the back and I happened to be talking to this one guy that I had met yesterday. And he was, he saw this look on my face. He's just like, what are you thinking? Or he was like, what do you think? And I'm like, I was like, I don't know if I can give you this, you know, this big grand assessment of everything because I'm hyper focused on that, you know, fire department connection right there. And he like looks over, he's like, what about it? And so there was this one little facade and it had these three recessed panels of brick inside, you know, so like the whole thing was brick.

38:47Evan Troxel: And then there was like, let's just say two courses of brick that were proud. And then two inches back was, you know, a series of two, two courses that were, you know, recessed and then two courses and then two courses recessed and then two courses proud. And so, but the thing was, is that the fire department connection was straddling both of them.

39:11Cormac Phalen: Oh.

39:11Evan Troxel: And so there was this big gap. Did they literally say, what about it? They did say, they said, well, what about it? And I'm just, and then I'm like, they could have chose a surface to be on. Yeah. Do they want to be on the proud surface or the recess surface?

39:30Cormac Phalen: I like how you're giving the option to the connection itself, not the person who coordinated us.

39:34Evan Troxel: Yeah, and I was just like, it wanted to be somewhere other than where it is right now. And I was just like, I'm just so now hyper-focused on that. I was just like, now, you know. Because it's so wrong. And before we walked in there, I was just like, you know, now I have low expectations. You know, because just that one little detail is just like, are you serious? seriously you put that like you've you've gone through this effort of articulating that brick facade and now you've got this this one like missed coordination item of a fire department connection that literally now looks so out of place yeah and and then you know me you you definitely know me so i'm sitting there it unraveled from there because now i'm looking at Like they've got these two different, you know, a Leukabon surfaces.

40:27Evan Troxel: And so they've, you know, they've got a whole bunch of panel joints coming together. And some of the panel joints are aligning and some of them are way off. And it doesn't, it is not a mistake or it wasn't a design decision or something like that. Sorry, it wasn't a design decision. It was a mistake. It was just the fact that they, they missed the coordinating of all of these things because then you try to like align those joints with um say your mullions and your windows or the handrails up above and then like the big panel design kind of just keeps pushing off and and it was just like you know these are the things the things that you know as we're talking about that you zoom out you zoom back in you zoom out you're like okay are these lines exactly where i want them to be do i Am I purposeful in the fact that the other lines are just below it in another panel, very similar to it, is now completely way off?

41:27Cormac Phalen: So the thing is, it's like at some level, people are thinking this stuff will take care of itself. Right.

41:35Evan Troxel: But you don't, you know, like what you should be, you shouldn't be expecting is the contractor to make those design decisions. We used to be able to at least know that we were going to have a conversation about it. Dave Pruding, you know, he would at least ask the question. Funny enough, so fast forward to today. I had, you know, my contractor for the building in Baltimore. He had texted me a picture and he's just like, the drawings show for this light to be here, but every other one of your fixtures, you know, your card reader and your strobe and everything else are all aligned. Do you want the light to be shown where it is on the drawings or do you want it to be aligned with everything else?

42:23Evan Troxel: And so he sent me a photograph and I'm like, I want it aligned. Thank you for asking. And you know, that was the, that was the symbiotic relationship that we had because, you know, he was like, yeah, I know you don't really want it there. It looks at me, even to me, it looks off. Another set of eyes and another set of eyes

42:42Cormac Phalen: question in real time just solves that issue. Exactly. So, okay. So how does this all relate to the initial question with, with the, the emerging professional who's.

42:54Evan Troxel: Well, so, so in a way, you know, I, I even asked her, I was just like, if design isn't your thing, do you think maybe, you know, like coordination or management or specifications or, you know, or even marketing or some of the things that are within that, that you can find a niche to specialize in certain aspects of the project delivery. Does any of that interest you? You know, above and beyond, you know, just like, you know, okay, if design doesn't really interest you or, you know, like what is there anything?

43:26Cormac Phalen: Is that what that person is, that's their role?

43:29Evan Troxel: Well, I mean, to be quite honest with you, they're you know they're so um new in the career that you know as you can imagine what they're being you know tasked with is just you know either you know grunt work or maybe they're doing something it's like oh you were really good at photoshop hey we want you to do some photoshop or you know oh you know indesign hey we've got a report for you to help you know pull together yeah and and so like that doesn't give you the broad stroke of like what architecture is and that's why I think in a way you know we do ourselves such an injustice when we immediately pull a a recent graduate who may or may not have had some internship you know opportunities during school to just like immediately throw them into hey you're gonna be doing toilet roll you know toilet room details and that's going to be your role for the next you know couple of months on this project instead of taking the opportunity to say let's introduce you to architecture.

44:30Evan Troxel: Let me, you know, like one of my favorite things to do when I, you know, had the opportunity to was, Hey, you're new to the profession. Hey, you know, you're new to this firm. Let's, uh, let's go and take you out onto the job site. Let's like, look at what it is that we're trying to achieve when we start assigning you, you know, the tasks to draw those toilet room plans or, you know, do these different details or, you know, start drawing on a project that you don't even know anything about what it is that we're asking you to do, let's go take a look at the effects of it all. Let's look at a poorly detailed or poorly placed FDC and why it matters for you to pay attention and all of these other things and just teach them the importance of what it is that we're doing.

45:16Evan Troxel: Because again, you know, like if we're, and you've heard me say this so often, is just like when the default response to a problem in the way that they've done something is that's the way Revit draws it. It's because they don't understand the systems that they're putting together. And so the workaround of like, you know, knowing what the system's supposed to look like so that when Revit draws it wrong, say it doesn't join a corner or something like that. and you know that that's wrong, but you just leave it that way because you don't know any, any different. But if you know what the systems are supposed to do, because you've seen it in practice, you've gone out on site, you know, you've been exposed to, you know, construction site, you've been exposed to like, you know, the way a good, you know, successful design and, you know, bad design come together and stuff.

46:10Evan Troxel: And you sort of understand the materiality of things when you actually draw it in Revit can't close the corner. You're like, you know what, I got to fix this because i know that that's not what a corner actually does but when you default back to it and say that's just what rabbit does it's because we didn't do enough to educate that person into knowing what it's supposed to actually look like what it's supposed to actually do or how to

46:36Cormac Phalen: do it but but or how to do it but i really feel like the the big picture here is like finding meaning in architecture or elsewhere. That's true, too. Because if you're not fulfilled, it is 100 % based on the context that you're operating within. Now, there's two sides to that. There's the external context and there's the internal context. Okay, so the internal context we spoke a little bit about with attitude, direction. It can be boiled down to just a very small number of things, right? It's like, how are you approaching the day and where do you want to go? How are you letting people know about that?

47:16Cormac Phalen: How are you accomplishing taking steps to get there? But that external one, I think you have more control over that than you might think, meaning you can change it. If it absolutely is out of your control and it's having that big of an impact on you, because you have to have some control over your environment in order to feel like you are making progress. And so that has to do with the people. It has to do with the tools. It has to do with the resources. It has to do with all kinds of things. Right. So you have to take an honest assessment because what you want to do is you want to be able to align to things so that you figure out where your meaning in this world is.

47:54Cormac Phalen: And then you will find happiness through pursuing that meaning. It's not the other way around. You don't you don't operate at a happiness level and the meaning happens by itself. Like you literally have to find it. And so that introspection to me, by looking at the data, okay, what's going on inside of here? What's going on on the outside? What changes can I make to both of those? It might have to do with, okay, maybe you need to exercise more. Maybe you need to eat differently. Maybe you need to go to bed earlier. Maybe you need to find a job that's closer to you. Like there's all kinds of little things you can do.

48:32Cormac Phalen: and I feel like man if you because you may or may not find that in this profession and I don't care if you went to school for it or not you don't have to do it you don't have to do it no one's making you do it and no one's going to change it for you so like put on your adult pants and let's make things happen right you've got to be responsible for your own self and not be a victim of this thing because complaining about it isn't going to get you anywhere you've got to do something about it

49:00Evan Troxel: I don't know if I've ever told you the advice that I usually give to all of the young architects that ever have ever worked with me. And it's basically something that you and I do all the time. Like, you know, the, the, uh, advice that we give all the time on here, and you just said it, but I summarize it a slightly different way. And it's, you control your own career. You control what happens to you and your career. Don't let anybody else control, you know, your career. Don't give that power to somebody else. If, if you, if you let somebody else dictate your career, you're never going to be happy in what you're doing in your life.

49:44Evan Troxel: It's, it's exactly what you just said. So I can't really some, I mean, the, the, the quick summarization of what you just said, you know, but I just want to put that to the side and say, you know, rewind this for a few seconds, repeat, you know, like re-listen to what Evan just said, because that actually is the point of this is like, you know, if you're in this profession and you don't really like it, or you don't like something about it, it's you who has the opportunity and the responsibility to change it for yourself. And it's, you know, if it's going through, you know, maybe it's a health thing, maybe it's an environment thing, maybe it's, this just isn't the right thing, you know then it's you not anybody else don't let anybody else dictate your career dictate it for yourself that's the only way you're going to be happy yeah and i and i will go back to

50:39Cormac Phalen: because you're an emerging professional like really try to find that here unless you absolutely don't think it's worth it right but but to karmic's point earlier like there's a lot of things that you could do a lot and and in the profession adjacent to the profession outside of the profession i i think that there's there's plenty of opportunity out there but yeah it's an you're the you're the person who has to figure it out