 We're hearing from the architecture graduates. Everyone here has participated in the TSA talks. So you may already know them or their names are familiar. So it's Chad Kellogg, Jennifer Preston, Randall Stone, who is joining us in a little bit, and Karen Cubie. Ruth Benjamin, the Vice President of the GSAP Alumni Board, will be moderating. So I think let's start by asking everyone to give their brief introduction, their class year program, and what it was like when they were graduating and what their concerns were. And then sort of wrap up your introduction by talking about where you are now. And then Ruth can follow up with some questions on your strategies. Let's start with Chad. Thanks Lisa. So I graduated in 2008 at Mark. And kind of the last big recession. I was working at a small architecture firm that went from 15 people when I graduated and started there to about five people. I worked there for about six months. And then over the four years that I worked there, the office grew back to about 15 people. So we kind of weathered that last recession. And I think we did it through creativity and also just luck. I think the firm had a diverse group of projects. So some of them went away and some of them kept going. I started my own practice with a friend of mine about four years ago. And we have had a great four years. And now we're kind of bracing for what's to come. And so I'm really happy to be here with everyone and kind of help think this through and give you my advice, but also talk to my colleagues about the future. Karen, you want to go next? Hi. Yeah. I'm Karen Cubie and Leslie amazing. Almost no one pronounces my name correctly. So thank you for doing that. I graduated with an N mark in 2009. And this is what I remember. So this was back before you had amazing people. Like, like Leslie, you know, doing this important job in a professional capacity. In our day, there was a student bless his heart. And so we started our friend Michael, my classmate, who was trying to organize career stuff. Poor guy doing his best. So, so the scene was that, you know, there was career day that had been set up, but he was having such a hard time getting any firms to show up. And I actually didn't even go. It seemed like it was obviously going to be a waste because there were no jobs. So I had colleagues who went and literally, you know, they showed up and they met with whatever firm and the firm said, Oh, PS, we're not actually hiring. We just thought it would be fun to see your portfolio. So it was a dark time. And, um, And it was right after this, you know, this amazing moment where we thought that we could do anything. And I was working at a firm called Rex and there were no budgets. It was skies limit. Anyway, so that was the vibe. I think today I will not be sharing, you know, brilliant strategies. That I used on purpose that worked beautifully. I'm just going to tell you what happened and maybe you'll learn something. So thinking back to that moment, I actually was being sort of anti strategic. I was very busy with school trying to finish my studio projects and everything. So I thought, you know what, I'm not going to deal with the real world. And my vision for myself was that I would use the recession as an excuse to move to Paris and be a Bohemian. That was literally the plan that I had. But then I was ignoring all this stuff because it seemed like a real nightmare and I was just going to wait till I graduated. But then what happened was a job fell in my lap. And I was like, I'm not going to do this anymore. I'm not going to do this anymore. I'm a colleague. So, so I'm in Portland now and I'll talk about them in a second. But I, I, for 16 years lived in New York, including a few years before I started at Columbia. So a colleague I knew previously, recruited me for a job in disaster housing planning. And I ended up saying yes to that. I was in a real, real job. And I was in a real career path. It was a job where I made at the time, a lot of money. I had a lot of responsibility. There were a lot of amazing things about it. I'll talk more about it, but it wasn't directly architecture. And I haven't done directly architecture since. So there are, you can look at that as expanded practice, or you can look at that as a derailed career. I think it's, you can look at it either way. So I've been in a lot of different work in housing from a lot of different, and also before grad school from a lot of different directions, including editorial work, leading nonprofit called the Institute for Public Architecture in New York. And I'm now in a fellowship that I'm super excited about. It's the first year that the University of Oregon has had a fellowship in design for spatial justice. I'm one of six faculty fellows hired for the first year to do a combination of research and teaching, looking at what, how we can approach concepts of spatial justice. So thanks for inviting me. I'm looking forward to your questions. Thanks Karen. And let's hear from Jennifer before Ruth starts diving more deeply into everyone's experience. I'm a co-founder partner at Shelter. I graduated also in 2008, May of 2008. At that point in the world, I think there was a lot of sense that things were getting to be hard, slowing down jobs were as plentiful, but it wasn't really until September of that same year when Lehman Brothers crashed. I'm not sure everybody remembers that as much as I do, but I certainly remember it very clearly. And the whole world kind of exploded. And that, you know, a few short months after I had finished three years of a master's program and devoted a lot of, a lot of effort and a lot of money and a lot of student loans to that, to that adventure. And it was terrifying. It was really scary. A lot of friends, you know, I remember going to breakfast with friends and nobody could find a place to work and we were all incredibly talented, very well trained, you know, ready to work people. But since then, you know, they've all, all each of us have kind of taken paths. And I love, I love the way the panels before me phrased it as like, you know, intentional or derail. Who knows? It doesn't really matter, but it's all good. And I've traveled through a lot of different kind of purpose decisions and I feel really like zero regrets about any of it. But I can talk about it more in detail as we move forward. Great. And Ruth, tell us a little bit about your experience and what you're doing now. Sure. Really quickly as Randall joining a little bit later. Yes. Okay. Yes. So we can just go ahead and start now. Okay. Okay. Hi, everyone. I'm Ruth Benjamin. I graduated in 2010. I was at the tail end of the, the recession. So I remember feeling the tangible fear that Jennifer and Karen were in the middle of and Chad were in the middle of when they, when they all started looking for jobs. So I ended up taking three jobs. All with like paid. It was probably not what I was worth, but like it was good to get a foot in the door, especially in New York. And then luckily that all kind of led to all sorts of, all sorts of opportunities and landscape architecture, urban design, traditional architecture. So I've been very fortunate. Currently I'm an architect at architect and I'm part of the in-house design team at industry city. So it's been an interesting process thinking about how we go forward on our campus. If you're familiar with it, it was sort of like a mini rework. So we're thinking about how we manage the tenants coming in, all sorts of things, all sorts of issues that we hadn't necessarily thought all the way through before. So this is a unprecedented. So I'm very excited to talk to all of the panelists and hope that we provide something useful even though this is a very different. Set of circumstances. with Jennifer, but you guys can all chime in. But the first question I had was what's the best advice that you received upon graduating from GSAP and like starting your potential career in the midst of sort of really difficult circumstances? And if you did receive it? Yeah, I know. I think it's the best to advise. And I still practice this now, you know, so many years in is go to meetings and different groups, especially if you're still in New York City or any major metropolitan area, I currently live in like very rural Vermont. So there's not a lot going on. There's not a lot going on anywhere right now. But you know, I was a little bit reluctant when I graduated from Columbia, I think I was a bit of a snob, to be very honest. I was like, well, I don't want to go to like a mechanical engineering group, or I don't want to go to a sustainability group, I don't want to go to a trade floor, or I just felt like it wasn't something that I saw myself doing in my career. I really was like, I want to design stuff. I want to be an architect. I had an idea in my head. And you got to let those ideas go. And just let things happen a little bit. And so I went to a lot of different groups. I went to the AIA Coat Committee. I started to participate in different committees and get to know different people who are in really incredible positions in New York City. And my network just exploded. I had people everywhere all over the city that I knew and that knew me. And that continues to help me today. It introduced me to a group of the top 50 largest architecture firms in the country, have a small group of sustainable design leaders that get together every year. And I'm still part of that group. We're having a cocktail hour tomorrow night and they're doing incredible work all over the globe. They're thinking about sustainable design at the edge and I just drink with them. So that's the thing ever. And if I had refused to go to some of these quote unquote groups or clubs that I thought I was too good for, I wouldn't know these ones for people and I wouldn't have what I got. So that's my life. Okay, be open. Chad and Karen, I'd like to ask you the same question. So Chad first. Yeah, I think something similar along those lines of I think somebody said be flexible. And I think that helped me in my first couple of months working as the I actually got hired before Lehman Brothers collapsed. And so the office had a very different trajectory and but but in short order, 10 people had to leave the office. And I think it was just kind of being willing to like do whatever, you know, I was kind of hired to be a designer, but I was, you know, doing technical things. I was getting coffee. I think I was I was able to keep my job because I was just kind of always busy and always trying to find something to do. And I think this is something that when now that I have my own firm, and we're having to make some hard decisions, I feel like the people who are team players and who are just kind of up for whatever and are going to be kind of conceivably airy, you know, like going to just keep going even if it's a little bit boring or we're taking on a project that's not super exciting. And you kind of know you can trust them to to kind of go the extra mile. I think that kind of attitude can be really helpful in a recession because when everything's good and firms are bidding for the top designers and you can bounce from one firm to another, it's a very different environment than if you're just trying to keep the job you have. And they almost take two different approaches or two different skill sets. So I think finding ways to be indispensable and being flexible were, you know, useful at that time and I bet they'll be useful the next six months or a year. Right, I think that like I found the same thing that being resilient in that way made you have to be flexible and then is only serving me better at this point. And then it only becomes easier at some point too. So hopefully, of course, there's an ebb and flow, but that's what I found too. Thanks, Chad. Karen. Okay, I do not remember any advice from that moment. It was really a blur and really stressful. So I don't remember. I've lost that out. But I do remember Chad and I both went to Berkeley. And so I came to New York right after graduating and I'm dating myself, but I think I used a phone. I called our alumni person and that person put me in touch with a few Berkeley alumni in New York. And so, you know, I'm 22. And like my second week in New York, I show up in the office of Ronette Riley on the 80th floor of the Empire State Building. And she looks at my like garbage portfolio and she says, you're never going to get a job. Because anyway, I, you know, I had worked at a summer camp. I didn't know what was going on. She said, you're never going to get a job. And then she turned it around and she was like, how much is your rent? And she started to calculate what I needed to make. And then she wrote down, she wrote down the addresses for the Architectural League and the AIA. And so again, I'm dating myself, but I think I physically went to these places, which is something we used to do. We used to physically go to places. So I physically went to these places. I said, hey, I don't know what's happening. I'm 22. Ronette told me to show up. And so similar to what Jennifer is talking about. Again, it's, I'm not going to tell you a great strategic moves I made. I just, my career is basically, you know, doing work around my interests and then having really good luck and saying yes to things. So in this case, I, you know, I volunteered from like, you know, day one, basically in New York, at the league and at the AIA. And, you know, those first days volunteering, which were not trying to get anything. I was just trying to, I was just volunteering, led to everything else. And then volunteering with helping to start Architecture for Humanity is what got me linked up to the job I got in the recession. So that's also been, you know, what's happened for me. It's just been over and over again. I've been side by side working with someone on a volunteer project or something. And then later, they've given me a call and given me an offer. Great. We also have Randall Stone joining us. So Randall, if you could just give a little introduction, and then we just finished with the first question, but I'd love you to answer it too, which is just the best advice that you received during the time that you graduated and how you would spend it to the rest of us. Sure, apologies for being late. I graduated in 1990 from Columbia right into a recession. I was living in Boston at the time, and over half the architects had already been laid off. So it was, you know, just absolutely not the best time. But, you know, very quickly, I was able to get a job, which actually, which actually, I did practice architecture for many years, but the job that I got was actually working for a firm doing retail design. And the retail design business, which wasn't that popular in the architecture space at the time, really sent me on the path of eventually expanding my career into going beyond just the architecture and getting into experience design across all kinds of sectors. The best advice I received at the time, well, at the time, as I kind of heard there, was you had to get out and just perseverance and take any job that you could get because, you know, the smallest job turned into the biggest job. Great, thank you, you guys. I think that's great advice, and I hope that that's useful for everyone. Feel free to also, like, if you have any to interject, but I'm just trying to prop some questions here. Another question that I had, which might actually, yeah, I think it actually ties in pretty well, is if you knew what you know now, what would you do differently if you had to go back? I'll start in the same order. Jennifer, you can go first. I feel like I want to give this a little bit of thought, but let me just dive in. I've heard that question before, and it's like, how can you possibly look back? You know, all the little things that feel like derailments or errors get you where you are. You know, I took a job as a sustainable design consultant doing lead projects. That was my first job out of Columbia. It was not what I was qualified to do. I didn't even have a lead AP. I studied for an exam and passed it before my first day, but I accepted the job before I had it. You know, it was a horror. It was not a good job. It was not what I wanted to do with my life at all, but it let me get a sustainable, like, build my career towards a sustainable design director position in New York City, which like, that was 10 years of a chunk of my life that I loved, and it was wonderful. I guess, what would I do if I knew all of that? What would I do with all that information? I just would do exactly the same thing. I'm really, like, have my own little practice. I'm doing work I love. I'm doing it with people I love. It wasn't great. It definitely sucked, but I wouldn't change it. I think that is exactly what I would say, too, if I had to answer this question. Don't worry, because all of these opportunities, even though they seem crazy, end up culminating in something that usually turns out pretty well. So, don't get your heart set on a certain path, and then you can kind of grow from there, and there's so many opportunities in here. So, don't feel worry. Chad, go ahead if you have. Yeah, that's like, I mean, it's a tough question because you just never know if you'd taken a different path. I actually was right around the leaving brothers collapse, and I was out at a party. It was a gallery opening, and I was chatting with Stephen Hall, and he said, he thought I was basically trying to get a job at his firm. He's like, you know, talk to my person tomorrow and we'll hire you. And I was like, oh, well, this, you know, Stephen Hall is an amazing architect. And I didn't pursue it because I was like, well, is should I like jump ship and switch? But I always wonder if I should have worked in his office. And then I think, you know, his office also had layoffs, and who knows whether I wouldn't have been able to, you know, hold on there. And so it's one of those like, hindsight is 2020, except some of those forks in the road, you just really don't know what would have happened otherwise. But kind of counter that, I would say, I think I would have not worried as much and said yes to more things. And also, I think I would have had more confidence and even probably asked for more from my employers. I think the one thing that can happen in recessions is you kind of devalue your own worth as an employee and what you're bringing to the firm. And I think that there was kind of a lag effect where in 2010 and 11, I was not asking for raises and I was not pushing for promotions that I probably should have been. And I see the younger people graduating and how good they are at negotiating salary and, you know, advocating for themselves. And I would say, you know, keep be polite, but keep believing in yourself and keep pushing for your own advancement and career. Great advice. Thanks, Chad. Karen? Yeah, I was going to say a similar thing, which is that I hope, you know, I've heard the comment, take any job that you can. And I think it's making sure to not have a sort of scarcity mindset. You know, there might be different financial realities for different people. But definitely, if you are really desperate, don't tell anyone. You know, and there's a book that I highly, highly, highly, highly, highly recommend called You Can Negotiate Anything. Anyway, so I negotiated, I'm going to look at the author, Cohen. It's very, very good. Anyway, read that. But I certainly negotiated my position. I didn't actually have anything else, but I didn't tell them that. I negotiated a significantly higher salary than I was offered. This was not an architecture. But you also don't have to take a job in architecture right now. So what would I, so I'm thinking about two things. What would I do differently? Oh, good. Someone found it. Thanks. So what would I do differently? I might have a different mindset within the job that I got. So yeah, so I got this job. It was, it was federal money, you know, funneled through different things to do disaster planning on a regional scale. And I was on the housing team. And it was, I'm not sure if you said painful or something else, Jennifer, but it was painful. It was a painful couple of years. It was very difficult to go from the lovely sort of collegial, like intellectual, beautiful space of GSAP into being, you know, in a hierarchical job run by emergency managers who think very differently. They don't want to hear your theory. They, my boss would say over and over again, less words. And, you know, all the existential, all the stuff that we were dealing with in school, I wasn't allowed to deal with that. I was just meant to produce in a very particular way in a very different language. And it was really painful. And I was like, you know, spending way too much of my own, like psychic energy, thinking about that conflict. So, you know, you might also end up in a job that's not architecture. And it might be difficult because you're going to have to work with people who don't think like you. Now, you know, looking back, it's really cool that I, it was horrible. But I had the chance to learn how to switch gears, to learn how to speak in different languages. So I wish that I could have thought of it more as a game and not taken it so personally and learned from that. And so that's something that I would do differently. You know, I took the job. It was a lot of money. It made sense, not a lot, but it was a lot compared to what my architecture friends were making. So it made sense, but I would have operated differently within the job. And then I had one more thought to your previous question, Ruth, which is that our old Dean, Mark Wigley, used to have some advice that I thought was helpful, where, you know, it can be awkward sometimes to ask someone directly, will you hire me? But he had a specific suggestion, which is to say, do you know anyone who's hiring? So of course, if that person is hiring and wants to hire you, they will tell you, but it doesn't put them on the spot and gives them the chance to tell you different people to approach. That's great advice. Thanks, Karen. Randall. Yeah, I guess you don't know what you don't know, I guess, of that camp. I do remember at the time I was debating on whether I was going to stay in New York or move back to Boston, where I ultimately decided. So if I would have contemplated where I stayed and what I ended up doing was great, and as everyone here, it all worked out for the best, I still wonder if I would have just stayed in New York, how the story would have played out differently for me. There was just a different energy at the time, a different vibe. And so even though I wanted to go back to Boston, I did it reluctantly. Interesting. I think that's another, we're very New York-centric, coming from GSAP, but there are students from all over the country and all over the world, and it's interesting to think about how they can use Columbia as a sort of, obviously having that degree is a great jumping off point, but how they can use that to leverage getting the foot in the door anywhere in the world. I guess one thing I wanted to, that's going to be my final question, but one question that I wanted to ask before that was, since we're all architects on this panel, that there's a lot of, I felt this, and I'm not sure if our students feel this right now, but I just wanted to ask this question. There's a lot of pressure to follow a very specific pathway in getting, in your professional career in terms of internships, finding your mentor, getting licensed and starting your own firm. I think definitely in the, I would say past 10 years things have changed a lot, things have not changed a lot. What would be your advice for that sort of thing? For example, I myself did get licensed a couple years ago. I have not used it at all. And I don't plan on starting my own firm at this point just because I really enjoy the collaboration with a larger team. I don't, and I know that's a lot of, invokes a lot of anxiety in newer graduates. So I just wanted to get your advice about how you see that working in our industry in the future, like now and in the future. I'll switch it up a little bit. Chad, can we start with you? Well, I'm kind of traditional, I guess, in the fact that I did start my own firm and I'm licensed. I also live in San Francisco and I feel like most of the architects that I know here are actually not architects. They're mostly working for tech companies, working for Google, working for Salesforce. And they're doing things, sometimes some of them are doing things related to aesthetics and related to design, but not, I don't know anyone for instance who's working for Apple, like designing their stores, but they do have those sort of things. So I would say I feel fortunate that I've been able to do this, but I also don't think it's the easiest thing to do. And some of my people that graduated with me who are working for Google, for instance, are like buying houses and they're financially better off than I am. So it's also not necessarily like the most profitable thing to be a small architecture firm, even in a very good economy. The economy in San Francisco in the last four years has been amazing. I mean, the amount of opportunities and it's been an amazing time to really start an architecture firm and grow. And I'm an optimist, so I'm actually optimistic about even the next few years. But it's definitely not easy. And I think it's something that is more, you do it because you love it and not because it's the most logical thing to do. Good point. Very good point. Karen, can we do you next? I think that you have an interesting situation that you're in right now, especially. Sure. So my experience is that for me, once I stepped out of traditional architecture, so I did, I worked, you know, before G stop between Berkeley and G stop, I worked at a normal firm doing normal stuff. Yeah, and I had a normal internship at Rex. My personal experience was that I stepped outside of architecture. And then I flirted a couple of times with going back into normal firm work. But I that did not make sense for me because I had a taste of getting paid properly and having more authority than I would have in my early jobs. And so it just, you know, for me, I would have, if I had gone back to architecture, and there were like a couple of moments where I really thought seriously about it, and I was talking with firms, it would have meant for me personally a pay cut. And also, I would have been difficult on the ego, I think, because I would have had less authority. So that was my personal experience. And, you know, I, yeah, so I did that government thing for a bit. And then I ran a nonprofit for a bit. And then, you know, I've been working, you know, before taking this fellowship, working basically in three areas, teaching and writing. I edited a book called Housing as Intervention published by AD out of London. And then my work work has been collaborations with city agencies on projects that connect design and health, working in different capacities as an editor, as a project manager, as a make it happen person, whatever that means. So, and now I am thinking about, as different things collapse, I'm thinking about how I can, you know, it's like diversifying, right? So I'm thinking now about how to use that because things that have felt safe are no longer safe, right? Academia is supposed to be safe. But actually, there are higher increases everywhere now, right? So I'm thinking specifically for myself about, you know, how I can use, I've accidentally gotten a lot of experience, you know, I might go work for FEMA, honestly. So, so it's like I have disaster housing, I have editorial, I running nonprofit, I have, I don't even know all this stuff I've done, not on purpose, but just because I've said yes to cool things. And so now I'm, I'm hoping that that will be useful for me as different things close up. Great. Thank you. That Karen's had an interesting path leading to our fellowship that she's doing in Portland right now. Randall, it would be great to have you chime in now. Sure. Well, my career has been in like three ways, kind of conscious pivots as I've gone through. I got my first degree in traditional architecture, got my license and registered pretty much the traditional way of doing things worked at a small, small boutique design firm. I went to, I went to Columbia and got my degree, my master's there. And I went back to a now what would become a much larger architecture firm. So I got the boutique experience, and then I got the large firm experience. But it was in that place that I pivoted about 20 years ago, and ended up leaving architecture, even though I'm a licensed architect, I ended up leaving and getting involved in working with clients like airlines and car companies and Disney and all kinds of entities and helping them think of a bigger, broader customer guest experience. And so it goes beyond just the physicality of the space and it gets into the behavioral and product offering and business model and everything that needs to go into creating something. And what's funny is, I've come across all kinds of architects in the business that have, have made a similar pivot. There's more, there's a lot of architecture. And so I guess the thing I would like to say is that the architectural education is pretty powerful. It's got built into a critical thinking. It's got built into a complex problem solving. And so you can use your degree. You can use your ability. And I use it all the time. It's even in my shtick a little bit about telling people that I treat every project that I get with my clients as an architectural project. And we are the best thinkers out there. Way before design thinking caught hold. We were thinking that way. I love that. And I think that's a really good way to approach anyone, a job and clients. So thanks, Randall. I love that. Jennifer. Yeah, I love what Randall said and what all the other panelists said. The mindset of a task that I think we locker ourselves in is something I would encourage everybody to let go of. And I would phrase it a slightly different way, which is, I think we all have some version of what success means, like what that word actually means. And it might mean a lot of money. It might mean a couple of houses. It might mean like a big practice that, you know, takes itself over generations. I don't know. It's all, maybe it's all the same for all of us in the beginning. And then it starts to diverge. I'm not exactly sure. But it took me a little while to actually figure out what success meant for me. And I had a great job in New York City. I was, you know, leading teams in sustainable design. But I didn't, I didn't feel like it was what I wanted. But if I had like said to my person graduating from GSAP, this is what you're going to have in eight years. I'd be like, great, that's what I want. But when you get it, you're sort of, you get to do a little bit of a check and you're like, but this actually isn't the cost for me. And I scaled down my life. And it's better. And each person gets to make that choice. And I think what we do well as GSAP graduates, architects in general, is a lot of what Randall was saying, which is that we, we can pivot and we can move and we can evolve and be super resilient just in our own spiritual self of like what makes us feel good about our work. And you just kind of keep tapping into that. And you'll be fine, honestly, because if you're doing something you really care about, the work will come in some way. One of the pieces that I'm doing in addition to architecture is the Laurentier project, which is about bringing designers together in really beautiful spots all over the country over really yummy food with different chefs. And we talk about process and we use food to talk about the design process and we use food to talk about, you know, misogyny and femininity or social justice or whatever it might be. And Columbia gave me that foundation to be able to integrate all of that really beautiful thinking into outreach and building community. And it's not about architecture at all. But it's work I love and it feeds the work that I do as an architect. And I think we're all given that gift as a graduate of the program. That is perfect because I think that leads exactly into my next question, which is now that this pandemic is hit, the way that we used to network and connect is totally different. So people can't go to parties. People can't go to lectures. They, you know, everything has thoroughly changed. So how, what do your digital communities look like now? Jennifer is talking about how she uses these sort of dinner parties to kind of talk about everything designed. And I think that it's important to figure out other solutions that are like solutions that are private, public, like how, what are your new digital communities and networking resources? I'll start with, I'll start with Karen. I like to flirt with people through the chats in Zoom. I'm only sort of joking. No, like literally yesterday I was, you know, I'm using flirt in like a sort of non-sexual way. But I was on a big giant Zoom call yesterday that was awesome. The architecture lobby put it on about the Green New Deal was amazing. And I just started writing. I saw everyone I knew and I started writing in little notes. And I'm not getting a job. I'm not looking for a job, but you know, now I want someone's review next week. And then someone else ended up writing me and we're having a little chat about something else. So that's what I've been doing. That's great. That's great. And I think GZEP has been great about organizing things like this so that students can connect to alumni and each other. So I'm feeling really grateful to be part of that community. Randall, can we go to you next? Yeah, sure. You know, the networks, what's interesting about this and partly because I think, you know, a little bit of the monotony of being home 24 seven practically and being so hyper dependent on sort of these Zooms and Skypes and everything is what's really been interesting is I've been more social to a broader group of people than I ever thought. So all these kind of people that some people I haven't talked to in 20 and 30 years are getting together and having Skypes and disparate groups of friends are getting together and we're having birthday parties from people in California to Maine to New York to wherever. And that part is kind of interesting, this hyper digital socialization that's evolved, which allows us to connect with people around the world that I guess we could have done this for a while and people were doing this but not at the scale and the familiarity that we're all becoming of this. I wonder when we do get back to some sense of normal, how much of this will maintain or will it just eventually bleed away a little bit? I don't know. I'm thinking it will maintain to some extent but I'm not sure. I think that's such a good point. I had a similar, a lot along the similar lines where it's like because I live in California and a lot of my classmates from GSAP still live in New York on these coasts. I was really struck especially a couple weeks ago when I started having chats with people or they'd be like get together with some alumni and I would be included in these discussions and these parties or whatever you want to call it that I think that they're having in person on a more regular basis but they just happen to, oh listen to my chat as well because we can because you live in San Francisco. So I think that has been kind of a silver lining or kind of a surprising positive and I think that everyone's getting better at Zoom and more comfortable talking at a screen and also seeing their own face while they're talking at the screen and all these funny new things that we do but to you back to your original question I think one challenge is that even though we are super connected I personally feel like I'm constantly on the phone these days and I'm constantly on Zoom and so even though we're isolated you're kind of hyper connected and clients know you're at home you're not out at meetings you're not out at the site so people call you at any time. So I think it is a challenge especially you know on a social level it's good but on a professional or you know trying to interact with other professionals I think it's a challenge in terms of figuring out the right level of informality versus formality and like how to set up a meeting and how to let someone know that you want to show them your work say you're trying to interview but you're also not going to you know take up two hours of their time when they're busy doing other things so I think there is I don't necessarily have the answer for people but I think that there's part of it is letting people know if you are trying to connect with them on a professional level that you're respectful of their time and that you're going to kind of respect some of those boundaries even though you're at their house and you're at your house how you negotiate that is interesting. That's a really good point we don't want to overwhelm people with digital fatigue so thanks Chad. Jennifer if you have anything else to add to the things that you're already doing and mentioned to us that'd be great. Yeah just a really short I mean my office has been digital since its beginning so we're in different locations New York City, Vermont and New Jersey so this current change hasn't changed for us which I have always in these last few weeks felt like well this is a sign of our adaptability and resilience and something to feel good about but it's hard to feel good about what's happening right now um but I would say as an introvert which I imagine a lot of us on this call her it's um it's really important to be alone and to have a really beautiful space to be alone and give yourself that and don't ask for any kind of um don't apologize for like needing space to be alone and I would encourage people to do non-digital communication um I haven't had a chance to do it yet but like writing somebody a letter and having something arrive in their mailbox right now in this period of time would be just like a hug as the best as we can get through a hug I would I recommend to turn off your devices and take a pen and select some really beautiful paper and a really beautiful envelope and send somebody a letter. Going back to um actually mailing work samples again uh interesting I have a couple more things if I can yeah um so so one sort of anecdote so yeah so I'm in this very funny position you know I moved across the country there are six of us who moved here right to be visiting fellows and a big draw was to get to know um existing faculty and now we're all in our living rooms um so one of you know some of my fellow fellows were saying oh no that's that's lost that's fully lost um so we've but instead you know we're turning the tables and we would usually we're sort of we're visiting right so usually we're just accepting invitations but now um we're we're going to have our own sort of digital coffees where we're inviting in um the the permanent faculty who normally would have been inviting us um I'm sort of it's funny because I'm a super extrovert and I uh it's not uncommon for me to be at three events in one night literally in New York um but I actually have been hating all these same things that I've been saying no to most of them um but but then I'm thinking about a couple of things that or maybe three things that um uh I do consistently um and how they might operate in our new world so one is um you know going up to people who are way too intimidating and just doing it anyway um and I think that can work it's maybe it's a little bit easier now in some ways because you can shoot them a chat um where there's not going to be like a line at the lecture um so often I am not comfortable for instance um it's very uncomfortable for me to ask a question in a public forum um and therefore I just I force myself to do that often and I just say you know you have to something has to come out of your mouth Karen um so again like seeing it as a game um and and doing that has been really productive in a lot of ways and then a couple of things um that are sort of basic but in case it's helpful for anyone um you know people love compliments and they love to be asked for advice um so so um using that as an approach to people um uh you know maybe not saying well you give me a job but what would be your advice I'm looking for this kind of thing what would be your advice on how to go about doing that it's more it's like a bleak but it will actually probably get you to your goal faster um and then also like ending each conversation with who else do you think I should talk to um so those are those are really boring basics um but some things that I think can still exist fine digitally totally and uh mention of uh Mark Wigley's advice I like that um we have a question from a student and um it's a good one um Maria was asking how do you see the freelance field since it's one of um the options during these times and do you see work in that area and how would you approach um how would you approach looking for it um can we start with Randall I would like to hear your advice um well uh in my world the freelance world is a big part of it um and there is uh there is a uh you know it it's a it's pretty kind of a gig economy anyway with groups coming together big groups small groups and we we we employ a lot of freelance tech help there are a lot of platforms out there now for freelance and you do see architecture positions um listed on them and not not a lot but um um there are um platforms that you can present yourself and jobs people looking for freelance work um I I've seen it and I've seen requests specifically in architecture but just also in general design issues design problems but um yeah it's I think the best way to do it is to find the the the appropriate platform that works for you and and that's how people are are hiring their freelancers now great um Randall if you have some of those resources that maybe we can call from you that will be amazing sure I can put together some of those sure awesome thank you um chat since you are in your own firm and um well it's not a freelance thing but like you started off the I'm sure that way what would be your advice here you're on mute sorry yeah sorry um I think well it kind of is related but maybe a little bit different is we've started talking about digital internships or remote internships for the SAR because we actually don't know what the travel situation will be and we don't know what um you know the stay at home orders will be in California the next couple months and so even the people that we were planning to hire as interns may be in sort of a somewhat of freelance capacity because they may just be working from you know where they are currently um so I think um there even if uh I think it's it's it's one option to just approach architecture firms and say hey you may not know what your um you know next six months are like but we're open to doing remote kind of freelance work um if you're doing it on a stipend or it's like a you know a true internship and you're not in the office you're not using the office as computers you have to have a certain amount of independence which I think freelance work always has where you're kind of you're taking a piece of work and then doing it um and that takes an additional set of skills um you know your own you have to be more self-directed and you have to um know how to kind of almost pitch a project I guess or you know kind of take a piece uh at a time and you don't get the same feedback that you would if you were in the office and you're having a discussion every day um so I think it's even even at architecture firms there may be some pseudo freelance situations going forward great yeah it's uh what's interesting I'm sure this is ever-evolving but that's an interesting way to approach traditional firms too um Jennifer do you have any advice in this situation like a freelance I do it's going to be boring um all of my all of my staff are contracted so they're all freelance and they and we like it that way yeah and they like it so and it keeps everybody really flexible um you know one of my client one of my staff is raising two young kids and it kind of managed her own time exactly how she needs it to be and it works really well the boring part is before you do it just make sure you understand the difference between a 1099 and W2 or W9 sorry I get it wrong and talk to a tax professional or an accountant or a friend who understands finance just to know what it means when they say self-employment tax because it's a lot of money it's 45 percent income typically which is a lot more than you get when you're an employee when you're not at when you're not at work so ask for more money so that you can cover the fact that you're paying more taxes you're paying social security and you're paying for Medicare okay boring but really that is great great boring advice yes no no the difference um thank you Jennifer um Karen I like the part where you're like okay listen to me um no that's helpful um yeah so so I'm realizing that you know there are it's true once in a while I am strategic um so when I was when I was wanting to move from leading the Institute for Public Architecture to doing my own work I knew that I wanted to um do more and more work uh connecting design and health equity um and so what that looked like was um a million coffees uh where I was you know uh figuring out you know the the question I had was to figure out what does the landscape look like who's doing interesting work at the intersection of design and health um so that's how I got my foot in the door uh doing what ended up being has ended up being like a ton of awesome um contract work with city agencies etc it started by um yeah meeting with everyone who I was told was cool doing cool work in that area um and then having very making it easy for them you know being super clear you know these are the things that I can do I can do editorial I can do da da da da da so they're not so they're not lost you know both in the way you present yourself and whatever your CV says like super clear where they can fit you and what you're interested in so for me it was that combination where someone needed an editor and and that was the start of of that and then um an anecdote from one of your classmates Ruth um who cold called you know this is this is pre-covid so who knows but she would cold call firms and say hey I'm interested in doing just you know this many hours a week and she found that firms were quite receptive this is architecture firms because they hadn't thought they were didn't feel ready to post a full job because they didn't have enough work for that and so and maybe they felt awkward about posting for 15 hours a week whatever she was looking for um but when she proposed that they thought huh you know I am sort of on the fence we could commit to 15 hours a week um come on in so she she had a lot of luck that way that's um great advice and uh and with all of this um be careful that you make sure that you get what you're worth um and don't undercut yourself um if anyone has any other questions please put it in the chat otherwise I'm going to end with one last question um so I want to kind of tie this back to G-SAP how did you feel that G-SAP like the clout of G-SAP helped you in shaping your future I know this is a very broad question but like specifically in getting your foot in the door professionally um as you moved forward um I'm gonna start with Chad um I think uh you know it helped in getting my first job out of G-SAP because um it was a direct connection um Marcus wasn't an alumni but he was uh about to be teaching in a studio at G-SAP so it was his connection to the school um when I started the practice we have now um literally our second client at the first um interview said well I see from your resume that you know you went to a good school so she was kind of judging based on Columbia and I thought that was a little bit funny at the time but um it does people do pay attention to those things so it's something to just hopefully it boosts your confidence I in my experience um Columbia grads don't actually um kind of tout it as much as some other east coast Ivy League schools do and I think we should um so uh don't be shy about it it's uh it's definitely a feather in your cap it's something to be proud of and um and just kind of make sure it's a part of your resume and that people are aware of your excellent education awesome thank you um I think this is also an interesting question just because uh Career Services has expanded so much at G-SAP so you have an amazing resource there uh so kind of cold calling and doing it just with our resume with how we had to do it before um can I ask uh Randall next um how you use G-SAP to kind of I totally agree with that I mean having Columbia being associated with Columbia graduate school of architecture um even even in my world it still carries a lot of uh cloud I mean it's it's recognized both from a from a legacy standpoint but also because of some of the great academics that have come through there and you know I guess the being able to you know um when I was you know I've run into Bernard Schumi on the streets of New York and it you know it's still nice to have those connections and those exposures that we had over the years that you know we can go and talk with all kinds of people in part because of the people we've met at Columbia both the the academics and even the the the students who go on to do great things whether they become museum curators or whatnot awesome thank you um Karen can we uh have you weigh in sure um I mean I've recently appreciated more the degree to which um you know my sort of G-SAP community has acted as a passport um and most recently I um I organized the whole like speaking tour research tour awesome time for myself in Argentina and Chile um just through G-SAP connections Augustine Chang um I was lucky to be in the G-SAP incubator in its last um year um so he was instrumental um in helping me to to set up those connections so realizing that actually I I'm a couple degrees away from like a bajillion countries around the world has been um pretty awesome great um Jennifer would love your input too yeah it's it's definitely a matter and it's it's worth the effort and like for those I mean I talk about money again because I just think we don't talk about money enough and we're not good at it really I try and help people be better at it but um if any of you are like scared about your loans or thinking like what did I get myself into and like into this economy that I'm launching myself in um you know it the money is worth it it really does pay itself over time and it continues to pay itself over time it's not just about the first job you get out of school it's the clients who look at your your CV when they're looking at your portfolio and you're applying for a project for your firm it matters and it and it gets you far so it don't ever feel like you didn't invest in something absolutely valuable you did awesome thank you thank you so much to the panel um we've been pretty lucky that everyone here is from a different part of the of the US so um but we also have alumni all over the world and you guys know that and we have been able to personally interact with them and go abroad so um in this time make sure that you feel free to connect to anyone that you have in your network um it's a big one uh so Leslie quote who started the the whole um meeting today she is able to connect you to any alumni around the world and she is fantastic so please use her um as much as you can uh her um her email is lek2162 and i'm sure you can find it through the gsap office too