I have been practicing as an Architect, or in a closely related role now for almost 30 years, and feel I have made many contributions to the landscape with my buildings. Mostly good, some better then others, but I have to admit I haven’t ever worked on a building that I am embarrassed about or that I feel the environment was better off before I did my building.
The buildings I have designed and worked on have been for the most part environments for people to enjoy. Whether that is a place to live, a place to learn or a place to have recreational fun—they have mainly urban buildings or very remote buildings. Not a lot of work in suburbia in my 30 years practicing.
But I know a couple of Architects my age that their whole career is based on say–strip malls, or storage centers, etc. Personally I don’t feel that any of these, especially strip malls are a good addition to the built environment. They glorify the automobile with huge expanses of parking, they are almost universally ugly buildings with little or no architectural character, little or no thought is given to the green side of the building, etc. Another specialty I would have regretted is prisons/jails. I realize as a society we need them but they are as a building type universally depressing, unimaginative, etc. The thought of my career being spent designing places to incarcerate people is very depressing to me.
I think I would regret my career if that is the type of work/path I had chosen to go down. All in all, I have to admit looking back I have been extraordinarily lucky. Often choices are made because that is the job available and you do what you have to do to survive. So I am not trying to judge anyone who has ended up making those choices as I recognize I could just have easily ended up doing the same under a different set of circumstances or opportunities—but I am curious as to if there is regret in hindsight.
I figure that other professions/jobs must have similar career paths that after 20-30 years people regret. So looking back at your career—do you regret it specifically and/or any of the decisions/concepts/whatever you made along the way? Any choices you made along the way, do you wish you had a do-over?
I’ll bite. Since I started college, I’ve had 7 employers in my 50 years of an engineering/technical profession - never out of work except voluntarily for 4 months after I retired the first time. Three of them were summer or engineering technician co-op jobs. I stayed 16, 11, 10, and 6 years with others.
I got riffed once after 16 years but started the next day 100 miles away. I started as an engineering technician, rose thru engineer-titled (public sector) jobs, management consultant, and am now a technician again in my present job for over 10 years but it’s the most hectic one of all, with budget woes and inadequate staffing.
BTW, I’ve written site development standards that required smaller parking spaces and more green space in parking lots and I’ve incurred the wrath of p.e.'s and architects when I told them how their site designs didn’t meet code or the applicable state laws. I regret not at all my decision to move south nearly 40 years ago. I don’t regret any of my career choices except the one to delay my baccalaureate level of ed for many years following an associate in engineering degree.
I am thinking of hanging it up again later this year.
Yeah, me too. I became an engineer after a long hard educational struggle. After 26 years, I’m at the top of my game and very good at what I do.
I had a gastric bypass in '05, and got into some very good good physical shape, so I became a volunteer fireman and EMT. With a few years of doing that under my belt, I now regret not picking pro firefighting as a career when I was a young guy.
But then I would not have made the big bucks I get now, either.
My first career was as a teacher of young children (my 1st degree was in child development). I spent 15 yrs or so working for low wages, no or few benefits.
On the one hand, I don’t regret it because I chose it and loved it. Why I stayed with it so long.
On the other, sometimes I think, gee, I could have a LOT more money/assets than I do now if I hadn’t “wasted” all those yrs working with other people’s kids for shit pay.
My SECOND career was working in offices; receptionist, office manager, executive assistant, etc… About 10 yrs in duration (and I still do it on a temp basis from time to time). Eh…no passion involved, but much better money.
I am currently back in college majoring in film with an eye to work in that area. (Production Assistant, Assistant Director sort of gigs and/or making my own stuff). Worse case scenario, I go back to working in an office after graduating with a higher degree.
Overll, no major regrets. I did what I loved, feel I contributed a great deal to the lives of many children, enjoyed my time spent in offices, and don’t consider the trade off of having majored in something more lucrative and making more money doing something I hated/wasn’t enthused about worth it.
I grew up loving drawing and all art in general. My best friend while growing was extremley talented since we had the same interests it’s no suprise we connected and grew to become best friends during High School and College. He was a much better artist than I was, yet he never made fun or ridiculed my art and appeared to even enjoy it. Some point through college I made the mistake of comparing my skills to his and decided I’d never make it as an artist.
I changed career paths. He continued on, lived all over the world now lives on the west coast and L.A. gladly pays him large sums of money for his artistic brilliance. He’s a celebrity and has done and continues to do some amazing work.
We were and still are the same type of person. Hindsight tells me my “shitty” art would of yielded me some moderate successes If I would of only stuck to my artistics guns and persevered.
Instead I’ll have to stick to middle management in an office environment.
you do realize that american cars in general have not gotten much smaller, so shrinking the parking spaces makes it difficult to actually park properly and get out of cars? With more an more people getting SUVs and minivans “because large vehicles are safer” and the average driver sucking at actually driving and parking [or being sucky and just not caring that they are skewed or offside in the parking space] it gets difficult for people to actually have adequate parking space per vehicle?
I don’t mind some trees scattered around, but for the love of ghu, please give us back FULL sized parking spaces!
I’m very happy with my career choices. I’ve managed to try four areas of engineering work - research, teaching, private practice, and goverment practice. Some engineers get locked in to a certain area and never get to try the others. Each has its pluses and minuses, so I ended up in private practice which seems to suit me best.
I started college, stopped and then went back after a couple of years. Even though this put me getting my bachelor’s a full decade after HS graduation, I don’t regret it. I think I learned a lot from the “school of hard knocks” during those few years.
I do have one regret, and that pertains to the crazy situation I was in for the last couple of years where I did a lot of subcontracting for another firm which wasn’t to my benefit. I wish I had stopped doing that sooner (I changed things at the beginning of this year).
Other than that, it’s been an interesting, illuminating, exhausting, frustrating, fine journey so far.
Yup. Knowing what I know now, there’s no way I’d go to law school. Costs too much, and practicing law grinds the soul in more ways than I can explain. If I did go to law school anyway, I’d opt for a more traditional practice. Cut my hair, wear suits more often, work in private practice for decent money, etc.
Had I any sense, I would have stayed in the military and seriously pursued a commission. Whether I made officer or not, I’d still be retired now with guaranteed income and medical insurance for life.
Thoughts of chucking my easy, well-paying, relatively stress-free career in IT management to go culinary school have become increasingly more frequent lately.
On the other hand, thoughts of making a contribution to the gene pool are also becoming increasingly more frequent.
Though not exactly mutually exclusive, having money definitely makes having kids easier.
Yeah, I’ve had some regrets, but probably the saddest story I ever heard was from someone when I was in Oklahoma City a few years ago, not exactly the cultural mecca of the world. He used to be big in the drama department at the University of Oklahoma and on the local scene, but knew that an actual acting career was out of the question. His buddy, also an actor he met at the University of Oklahoma, tried to talk him into both of them going to Los Angeles and breaking into the movie business. The guy I know knew this was a pipe dream, but his buddy went anyway. He figuratively shook his head at his friend’s naiveté and wondered how long it would take before he came back with his tail between his legs.
I got a BS and MS in engineering. I loved the work but I got married and had kids and had bills to pay and found myself looking for any way to increase my salary.
I ended up in project management, nothing whatsoever to do with engineering.
I honestly believe it’s killing me slowly. I wish I could just get it over with already.
Not a one. Well, not a major one anyway. I had my career track planned out at age 14. It’s now ten years later and I’m exactly where I want to be. I did all the hard work and sacrifice I knew it’d take to get here, and now I’m reaping the benefits and living a fantastic life that just keeps getting better.
Maybe I’m too young to really have any regrets. Maybe I’ll regret it in a few years. But I doubt it.
I’m the flip side of your coin. I left teaching after a few years partly for health reasons but also because the pay back then was horrible. I worked on the side fixing cars and laying concrete because I had to to make ends meet and to afford a house at the same time. From there I went into three different careers built around things people would consider hobbies (fishing, antiques and coins) and made really good bucks.
I regret not sticking out teaching. I was good; the kids I taught have done well and some kept contact with me the last 30 years. I made a difference in their lives and that feels terrific.
I regret that people were willing to pay more to catch fish they didn’t want to keep and for things to decorate their lives than to have their children educated. Its not as bad now as it was then - but its close. Too close for me to be happy about it.
Sort of. I was in construction for the first 10 years of my working life and was making plans to go into the business for myself. My very best friend was going to be my business partner but I kind of bailed on him for a wonderful opportunity in sales. 40 years later and I’ve made a really good living working all over the U.S.
He on the other hand drifted from one menial job to the next and eventually fell in with the wrong kind of people, as quite a few of my childhood friends did. We kept in touch, but about 4 years after I left NYC I get a call from his mother telling me that he was shot twice in the head while eating at a food stand in Brooklyn. In front of his wife and child. He had apparently robbed a couple bookies in the area and, well, they don’t like that.
Sometimes I think that if I had just stayed in construction I would have still found success and maybe prevented the best friend I’ve ever had from doing something so desperate and stupid.
I didn’t invent the concept. It was sweeping the country, like Swine Flu, in an effort to reduce the amount of pavement (and further enrich the developers’ profits). The ones I worked on the standards for were only for new sites in my then city of 45,000 (in the late '70s, early '80s - it’s now 100k, btw. The whole of Ohio and the northeast followed me there). That was a noble effort doomed to failure for lack of any enforcement (process or willingness),.
When I go thru that city now, I drive thru a mall parking lot that had them installed and laugh at the row of “Compact car only” parking spaces with a sign still in front of each one, the ones installed in the ‘80s, faded all to heck. The mall went bust and is now the county’s government center, having moved out of downtown to the big parking lot. The county zoning code enforcement folks’ office is in the building. The spaces are full of Stupid Ugly Vehicles (SUVs) door handle to door handle, one side anyway.
