Life isn’t a Fincher movie that makes sense only at the end, or a Denis Villeneuve film that gives you one big hit in the last scene. It’s a Nolan movie — twisted at every moment. Every scene has a twist. Every day takes you somewhere you didn’t expect.
Deadlines move without warning; Drawings get rejected after you’ve poured nights into them. A “Quick job” becomes an all-nighter, and you start preparing for it like it’s normal.
Patience, Adaptability, Progress.
These are lessons you don’t find in textbooks — you learn them through real-life challenges.
When Responsibility Finds You.
Being responsible for everything, especially with people depending on you, changes you. You have to be a role model, from coming early to the office to how you teach drawings. As a junior architect, you are neither a wooden spoon nor a silver spoon; you are a spoon in fire — you either hold your shape or get bent out of shape.
I didn’t always think this way.
Once upon a time, my goal was to please my architect and leave by 6 pm.
That was it. Responsibility? Not my problem.
The Day I Understood Respect
I had an incident at a site where people twice my age called me “sir”, I told them not to—just use my name. They hesitated and said the respect wasn’t for me, it was for my job.
That’s when it hit me — Respect is not given; it’s earned.
It wasn’t always like this.
I still remember standing on site as an intern, right beside my architect, yet no one even noticed I was there. I felt like I was invisible—just extra.
The Impact of How You’re Trained
My first internship?
Eight interns; No architects in the office; The principal architect, who barely showed up.
“Learn from the internet” was our training. I didn’t last long there.
The second?
An interior firm; That’s where I learned fieldwork basics — but line weights and layers? Nobody cared. Details mattered, but the discipline didn’t. Those experiences stuck with me.
Now, I’m the guy forcing interns to learn line weights — not to make life harder for them, but to make theirs easier than mine was.
What I Wish I Had
The guy who never stayed past 6 pm is now asking interns to put in the extra work. The guy who had no sense of ownership now makes his interns take ownership. I don’t want them to be like me when I started — I want them to be better. Because the rocks that get hit the most become the perfect statue, the more you invest in detail, the more successful you’ll be.
The Real Plot Twist !
When you start seeing that each line on a drawing is not just a line, it’s money, material, workmanship, transportation cost, and aesthetics – that’s when you start designing differently. Textbooks never taught me this.
- Life on site did.
- Mistakes did.
- Long nights did.
And somewhere between the past I didn’t understand and the present I’m still figuring out, I realized —the real plot twist in architecture is you.
Hope it helps — from an architect who learned the hard way – Luxanne.
