So You Want to be an Architect?

2025-10-23
I had two absolutely wonderful experiences just over a week ago:

As an architect, I've tried for decades to promote the profession and spread awareness of what architects, and other professionals, in the construction industry actually do. Especially in regard to architects as, many people, think we just sit around drawing plans. To this end, one of the things I have done for about 25 years has been getting involved in school and college programs around the East Texas region, speaking to students who are in architectural and engineering classes.

Over the years I've been involved in programs at Chapel Hill, Whitehouse, Tyler, Lindale and even as far north as Como-Pickton. In this photo, I was at a meeting with the Chapel Hill career and technology education group and, after the meeting we toured their facility.
They took us to their new school and at it we met the young job superintendent.

At the end of the tour, he came over to me and told me that he was a high school student in Lindale in one of the classes I spoke to up there a few years ago. He said he loved the class and said he decided to go into construction - and absolutely loves it.

Very gratifying for me to know that I helped someone in regard to a career.

Well, 6 days later I attended an architectural continuing education presentation with my friends at SC Architecture here in Tyler. To my utter amazement, after the presentation, one of their young project managers spoke to me and told me he was a high school student a few years ago, ALSO in a class I spoke to at Lindale High School!! He told me he decided to do classes in architecture and absolutely loves his job as a project manager at SC Architecture!

This has happened before over the years but, two in one week from the same school, just wonderful.

Over the years now I have bumped into at least 5 young people from classes I spoke to now in careers in architecture, engineering or construction.

2025-10-15
Well, I have fallen way behind this year in posting on this page but here's one from today. (Unfortunately, the consulting I have been doing this year was confidential so I could not show and tell).

Even though I am retired, I have been maintaining my architect license although I don't use it and only occasionally assist licensed architect friends under their supervison.

My friends at SC Architecture very kindly invited me to attend the CE Lunch and Learn meetings they hold regularly at their office and that's where I was today.

We had a very interesting presentation on how drywall framing may be used in many instances in place of metal studs, producing a much lighter frame, using less material and, suspended from the structure by hanger wires, rather than by having to extend metal studs right up to the structure or deck above.

So, many thanks again to SC Architecture for including me, I greatly appreciate it.

In my quest to show you what architects do, take a look at their FB page to see the range of work they do in our region.

I am so sick and tired of the ripoff that SketchUp has become. I was one of the first to adopt it, way back in the year 2000, when it was released by Software. Back then you could speak to the developers directly and give them feedback, which I did frequently. There was a free version but I bought the Pro version, personally, as well as for my company, from day one and paid my yearly maintenance agreement for 20 years to keep my perpetually licensed software up-to-date.

It was sold to Google, then later sold to Trimble. Even though I retired at the end of 2015, I kept paying for the maintenance of my personal perpetual SketchUp Pro software as I still wanted access to my many years of work and wanted to keep the software updated.

That all changed in 2021 when, IMO, all users were blackmailed into either surrendering their perpetual licenses and taking subscriptions or, keep their licenses and have no updates. So, as a retired architect, if I took a subscription, I would lose my perpetual license and have to pay a subscription for the rest of my life - just to be able to access my own 20 years of projects done with the software. If you decided to stop your subscription, you could not just stop and keep using the software from the year you stopped, no, you lose access to it completely. So, one either kept one's perpetual license and lost updates, or lost it and had to pay a subscription from then on just to access your work. As a retired architect, why would I want to do that?

IMO, the cost is ridiculous. SketchUp has not had any major earth-shattering improvements in 20 years yet the cost of the "Pro" version is 30% more than what BOTH Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop cost me each month and they are both vastly more complex sets of software that have had frequent and major improvements.

I kept my perpetual license and, what really angered me today, was this: I'm working on a personal project, recording my personal history and, I wanted to use the geolocation location ability to pull-in some topography from Google Earth into a SketchUp model - something that has always been possible to do. Well, much to my frustration, Trimble has disabled that (and other features I found now too, claiming it's "... to maintain security." So, in addition to receiving no updates, which I could live with, they have gone and disabled and restricted access to features we've had for years on a pro license.

All very frustrating.

If you would like to see the sort of work done by an East Texas architectural firm, take a look at the FB page of a friend of mine: https://www.facebook.com/jenningsarchitects

Jennings Architects, LLC Full-Service Architecture Firm

I have many architect friends here in East Texas and many of them, like I did, work with rural school districts. I did work for Como-Pickton ISD about 20 years ago and here now, one of my younger architect friends, Jennings Architects, LLC, is doing work there now for a new Gym and Career & Technical Education (CTE) facility.

As I've mentioned to you all many times over the years, a wonderful part of an architect's job is that you don't just sit in an office all day. You have original ideas and you design and create, then, you figure out the technical details and, throughout the process, you go out on site, observing the progress, answering questions and seeing it through to completion. I am looking forward to following this project as it progresses!

I’m about to teach 3 more classes here at Lindale High School to students interested in careers in architecture & engineering. The first class was a design exercise for the more advanced students.

Over the last three weeks I've been a quest speaker at 3 Tyler High schools, the last being what I'm showing here at the Career and Technology Center. I spoke to four classes and, at two of them, did design exercises with the classes.

For the first two classes I explained how you become an architect or engineer then, to the second, explained the process of designing and building a building and who is involved.

For the 3rd and 4th classes, I did a design exercise with the classes. With the 3rd class, each student had to do a design converting the classroom we were in, into a small 2-bedroom apartment him/herself. I had prepared a rough plan sketch of the room and walked around giving comments and feedback to each student.

For the 4th class, I used one of my school projects, with a simplified set of requirements, and the students had to work in groups and arrange cut-outs on the site plan to organize major elements of the project. Here too, I went from group to group, giving input and making comments. Once they were finished, I then showed the class what I actually did and the completed project.

The classes all seemed to go well and after each class, there were some students, seriously interested in architecture and engineering, who asked me questions. It was a lot of work preparing for this but, I think I was able to help some of them regarding career choices.

Here's a unique use of a CAD system for you! A few evenings ago I was wondering about something... I was wondering how high, the major solar prominence that we could see during the total solar eclipse in April, was above the surface of the sun? I searched online and could not find anything definitive, not even with Chat GPT, which referred me to NASA or to seek estimates by amateur astronomers.

So, I decided that, since us architects are problem solvers and can do anything, 😆 I would figure it out myself. The sun is about 864000 miles in diameter and the earth is about 7,918 miles in diameter. I pulled my photograph of totality into AutoCAD and, with relative scale superimposed it over the sun and created Earth to scale as well.

The prominence is about 21,500 miles above the surface of the sun and two Earths could fit between the sun and its apex. All pretty mind-blowing!!

Here's my AutoCAD file and look at the size of Earth compared to the sun.

I am teaching 4 classes here today as a guest speaker for students interested in careers in architecture and engineering. I’m at the Career and Technology Center in Tyler.

Here's another example of the type of work an architect does. A architect friend of mine, Jason Jennings, just completed this wonderful project remodeling the interior of Marvin United Methodist Church here in Tyler. He hired me to photograph it for him and here are some photos for you to see it. If you become an architect, you may do beautiful work like this too.