1. My STEP Signature Project was an internship with a design-build residential landscape firm. I helped designers create designs for clients, prepare presentations, make construction documents, and analyze the design for cost estimation.
2. I am so grateful for the experiences I gained from this internship. I have become much more confident in myself as I grew into the role of Hidden Creek’s design intern. I started as a student hoping that my skills were enough to get any job related to the field of landscape architecture. I went to the Knowlton School Career Fair as a freshman knowing many people don’t get internships after only one year of being in school. I met with many companies, most of which told me I didn’t have enough experience and that their internships would most likely go to the students two years above me. I ended up talking to Hidden Creek Landscaping and while they too told me I did not have enough experience, they encouraged me to follow up with them for next year. I did as the asked and at my sophomore year career fair, I reintroduced myself with an updated and much more impressive portfolio. I was asked to come in for an interview. I was just grateful for the good interview practice, hoping that would help me during later job interviews. After a few more job interviews and rejection letters, I was offered the job at Hidden Creek. I was overjoyed to have a job related to the field of landscape architecture.
As I was introduced to the company and continued my work during my first summer, I could feel myself becoming more confident in myself and my abilities. As I started my second summer (2020) with the company, I felt appreciated and needed as the company became very busy during the height of the summer season. I was instructed well at the beginning of my internship and so by the end, I needed very little assistance in the work I was tasked to do. I rarely had any questions. I could tell everyone in the company soon trusted me to do any of the work a full-time designer would. I started by helping with a design, doing some more of the mundane tasks during the process, and by the end of my STEP project, I was given my own projects to design and take all the way through the process alone. New full-time designers were hired at the end of the summer and they trusted me to get their work done as if they were asking another full-time designer for help. I had worked in similar computer programs, so I worked faster in school than I would have if I hadn’t kept up my practice in those programs. Going back into school in the fall, I could feel the difference in the confidence of my school projects.
3. The closest relationship I developed during my project was with a coworker that had graduated from Knowlton two years before me. I immediately felt comfortable talking to him about anything that I was unsure of or uncomfortable talking to about with anyone else. He was the most understanding and instructive when it came to questions I had about projects or anything related to the company. I developed other relationships with more experience landscape architects and horticulturalists that taught me about different ways to design. But I never developed a relationship quite as personal as the one with the former fellow pupil. As I said above, one of the biggest personal transformations I had was my confidence in the workplace and I think that particular relationship helped me the most. He helped me realize that any concerns I had were valid whether that was in the bigger scope of the company or in the smallest project. He was the one that taught me how the design process worked and how I could play a bigger role in the process as I progressed through the summer. As the company got busier and more people requested my help, he would intervene if I was feeling too overwhelmed. The professional and personal relationship I developed with my coworker, is one that I can tell will last after I have moved on from the company.
At the beginning of the summer in 2020, there were very few full-time designers at Hidden Creek which affected the way the company was run as the season got busier. I was needed more as a full-time designer than as an intern. I was given more and more projects and tasks to take care of as the summer went on. I was experiencing everything someone who works full-time would experience. I took on full projects from the initial meeting with the client through designing and to the presentation with the client. I remember my first presentation with the client. Beforehand, I practiced multiple times to myself and with a coworker acting as a client. Many other designers do not practice presentations beforehand because many presentations are the same. I presented with a coworker beside me for any help I might need. Afterward, I felt a lot more relaxed about interactions with clients. I have done multiple client presentations without other coworkers now. The first client meeting I had felt like a big transition point for me. That was the one thing I did not get any experience in before this point. I was already fairly familiar with other steps of the design process up until that point.
Acting as a full-time designer helped me develop my design style even further. With the creative freedom I was given for the remainder of the summer, I was able to experiment with different techniques of design. I designed things the company has never built before, I made mistakes along the way and learned from them. Because of the large responsibilities I was given this summer, I feel like I have a better understanding of what working for a design-build residential landscape firm will be like. I am unsure of whether or not I will like this kind of design better than the commercial/public realm, but I am grateful for getting this experience before I have even graduated. Many of my classmates have not gotten this type of experience in the workplace and I might have not gotten the same experience if there had been more designers hired at the beginning of the summer. I have gained knowledge in plants and adaptation to difficult environments that I have translated over from work into school. I hope to be able to not only translate the things I have learned into school but into other jobs, I will have during my career.
4. As mentioned above this experience has impacted my personal, academic, and professional career greatly. I have developed relationships with my coworkers that I hope to continue throughout my life personally and professionally. There are a lot of connections between Knowlton and Hidden Creek, through professors and students that have helped me develop the relationship with my coworkers. I was able to translate the skills I had learned during my internship in my schooling that helped me become more efficient. Not only were technological skills translated over to my school work but working with other people in groups and how to communicate well between others. I was able to translate my skills the other way as well, taking what I have learned in school and using it during my internship. I learned what I did and did not like about the residential landscape part of the landscape architecture field. I hope to explore the opportunities that this internship has opened up for me. I now know that I do enjoy residential design and have already made connections with other residential landscape design firms elsewhere. I will have the experience to show future employers and skills that others may not have at this point after graduation. I hope it will set me above the rest as I try to find work after graduation. Because of the amount of work, I helped with and headed myself, I have been able to add professional design work into my portfolio. This allows me to diversify my portfolio and add projects that are of a different scope than the projects I complete in school.
A project I designed (implemented by others at Hidden Creek)
A project I rendered (did not design)
A project I visited (designed and implemented by Hidden Creek)