The Internship Journal: Day One
It's overwhelming but that's normal.
It's overwhelming but that's normal.
If there was a word for being both overwhelmed and underwhelmed simultaneously, that would perfectly describe my first day at Wanders Werner Falasi Consulting Architects (now Werner Falasi). Arriving 20 minutes early was not enough I realized as I joined the large group waiting in front of the elevators. As I was waiting, I was thinking of another way to get to the office as it was already 9:00AM, and I did not want to be late on my first day - the conclusion: taking the stairs. Three flights of stairs later, I was met by Maria Calva as I entered the office. Maria is the executive assistant at WF and was the person I was most familiar with in the office as she handled my internship approval and guided me on the office hours, etc. Out of breath, Hennes appears, the architect whose last name, Werner, was on the front door. I had met Hennes months prior visiting the office and now, he was eager to take me on a quick tour. Awkward hellos were said and Hennes made sure I was familiar with my surroundings and made it clear that I was the new intern. The tour ended right where we began, with Maria. They were formatting my iMac and it was taking quite a while for it to be complete, so Maria invited me to sit with her and we exchanged stories, I asked questions, she gladly answered, and I had a deep understanding as to what her job entails and how it affects the entire office. I made it clear to her what my intentions were and she helped me relay that information to the architects in the firm once my iMac started to work. We quickly all sat in the meeting room and I introduced myself to the architects and the interior designers, I told them I’m here to learn how I can put my skills into a real project - whether its grunt work or mood boards or whatever it may be, I wanted to do real work, and thankfully they understood. “You want to learn the boring stuff eh?” said the Architect who had already added a seat next to his desk to show me exactly what the boring stuff was. He explained the difference between General Contractors and Joineries, why the files are organized underneath these two categories, and the basis of files required to build a project. The first task, create your own X-ref file(the backbone file of projects). How I wasn’t aware of what X-ref files are is beyond me but I’m glad I’m now familiar with it as I got the task done and that was the end of day one.