Odd Jobs

Architecture jobs are rather thin on the ground lately. They were thin last year. This year, four of our graduating class (what would have been "my" graduating class had I not added the second degree) found work. Some decided to continue there education, others are stuck in the same dead-end jobs they worked during college, while others are unemployed. Architecture, being tied to construction, is very susceptible to economic highs and lows. Building booms and busts are well know. I was very lucky to get that internship with Rocky Mountain Institute last summer. I can cross my fingers and hope they have something up my alley when the time comes to go searching again. I can also start looking at alternatives.

I am very, very, very interested in the Master of Divinity in Buddhist Chaplaincy at University of the West in California. However, I think I want to get back to work for a while. I've been in college far too long. And a PhD in Architecture, while interesting, sounds too masochistic even for me. Besides, I already have enough student loans to bankrupt three people. I don't even look at the total on the bottom of the statements anymore. I just file them away.

Option Number One remains, of course, the Fulbright Scholarship to Japan which I am submitting for in the fall. But those chances are getting slimmer, just by the numbers. Two years ago, they accepted half of their applicants. Last year, they only accepted a third. I spoke with the adviser about the difference between a research based proposal and a creative proposal. There was some promise there, but I can't count on anyone else seeing it the way I do. The Fulbright would be one of the very few things for which I would jump up and down and squeal upon getting. And I imagine that afterward the economy will have recovered some and I will have a most awesome resume.

However, that still leaves so many possibilities, but also so few. It would be interesting to write for an architecture magazine. But what are the qualifications they would look for and where would I need to live? (Architect is everywhere, after all.) Likewise it would be interesting to work for a newspaper as an architectural journalist, but again, qualifications, and last I checked only a very few large cities bother with such. Plus newspapers are worse off than architecture. I am interested in becoming a client advocate, a go between for a company and an architecture firm, but I think I need some experience working in a firm before that. The idea of teaching architecture history and theory at the high school level is intriguing, except for the fact that I don't like teenagers. (I didn't like teenagers when I was a teenager.) I would love to work for a Buddhist center somewhere as part of a capitol improvements project, but first I need to find one, and then I need to find one that will pay me enough to cover the aforementioned student loans. *Sigh*

There are all of these possibilities, but they are all so tenuous I can't figure out which limb to climb out on.