Good thread,
well my goal years ago was to become an Architect. And after 9 years of education (college 4y, polytechnic 2,5y and Masters 2,5y) I passed my Master's last month. There was very little other options to get the degree within that time frame. The other option was to do a work/school Masters degree after the bacholar's but that takes a minimum of 4 years. With most of the people doing it not even managing to finish it due to work/life taking first place and the education being a hinderence. So I chose to do a fulltime degree and finished it without any delays in 2,5 years. A mate of mine decided to do the other and has stopped after 2 years. Another for the long list.......
So the last month Ive been looking for work and have come across the same issues as Jack, although to a lesser extent. Anyway, managed to find what looks to be a great job and start on monday.
The problem with most jobs for my experience, or lack of, is that you end up being first and formost a draftsman doing technical drawings and having design assignments from time to time. Now I didn't want to do that, I worked as a drafstman for 5 months between graduating from the polytechnic (bacholars) and starting the Msc. And it got boring really quickly.
I was looking for a position that had designing as its main aspect with the possibility to grow quickly into an "architect". Managed to find such a position and will start as an assitant designer, the normal starting position, but will only be doing designing and no technical work. And the company is looking for people to become an "architect" within the firm. So if it goes well I can quickly grow from a assistant designer to an Architect. Which was my original goal.
So far so good on the goals.
I also had another which was to go abroad, Canada / Asia / States, but seeing as the GF won't be going (too close to family and stuff) I'll be looking to make a nice future here. If everything goes well we'll probably be buying a house next year, first going to rent, and then after a few more years start a family. The GF did nearly the same education as me and graduated last month aswell. She didn't have the goal like me to become an architect but after finishing the polytechnic realised that the jobs at that level wouldn't be what she would want. Fortunately she has also found a really good job, project manager / adviser for complex buildings in a building management firm. The most interesting part of the job is the adviser part, she will be checking the work from the different parties and will have the power to give advice to make it better. Had she stopped at the polytechnic and done a similar job she would have only been doing the "regular" management side which is mostly coordinating without any advisery position.
So for us Uni was needed to just have the minimum level for the work we wanted to do.
