For a part of our CLE course, we were instructed to complete a job Shadow. The biggest key to this job shadow project was to choose a career path that I might actually be interested in following one day. For the first step, I needed to first brainstorm a list of potential job shadow opportunities that I would be interested in. I was thinking of going down the artistic path, such as an animator of an artist, and I started to ask around if there were any people I was already in contact with through my family.

My first thought was to contact a company that my mom was working with at the time to see if could job shadow anyone from there offices, but my mom expressed to me that it would complicate things, so I decided that I would look somewhere else. My next focus was at my dad’s work since he works with a lot of artsy people. He relayed me to the production designer of his current project.

I originally set up a time on, technically, the last week of school, but he was sick so we rescheduled for the following Monday. Unfortunately, his wife caught what every he had and he had to cancel again. I told him it was no problem, and that I could find someone else. Now, I had to take things into my own hands, so I when online to find a potential job shadow in the field that I was actually interested in architecture.

After a while, I stumbled upon a very interesting website that belonged to an Architecture firm in Vancouver. They seemed to work on all types of architecture, as well as some other job titles that I had never heard of such as wayfinding. Finally, I called the number on the website in search of an email. After a long conversation with a member of the firm, she gave me an email which leads me to the first step of the job shadow, the introduction email.

As agreed she forwarded my email around their office, and I got two different architects that offered up a bit of their time. As I have shown above, I mentioned in my email that I was interested in environmental design, and one of the architects, a man by the name of Scot Geib, described that he had worked in that field before.

I decided that I would choose him because he seemed like he would be able to answer some of the questions I have accumulated over the past few years. As he mentioned in his email he wanted me to call him, and that is what I did, and by the end of the phone call, I had a date, time, and place.

As it turns out he was actually the co-founder of the architecture firm I first came in contact with and he has a part-time job teaching at Langara College, which is where I was going to meet him. Before the job shadow, I made sure I had a list of questions that could lead the conversation.

When I arrived at Langara College I was very excited and a little bit nervous. I was about to go face to face with the career path I had been considering for so long. When I first met Scot in person I immediately felt a little more comfortable and my nerves disappeared. He was an inspiration to me and really helped me understand the industry better. A minute in, I found myself putting down the list of questions because I realized I was really interested in what he had to say.

After asking a few questions about different classes I should take, and what he does on a daily basis, I realized that there were a lot of questions that had been bugging me for a long time. I started talking about everything from the future of architecture to what it takes to be a good architect. One very interesting example he gave was when he said to be a good architect you need to be a good observer of the world. He also mentioned that a piece of architecture is usually one person’s realization that has been refined by many peoples critique. After our conversation, I really had to take a step back and proses everything that he had said. I really appreciated how he addressed all of my questions as being intriguing and he would always ask if he answered the question correctly.

I think one of the coolest parts of this job shadow, is that he even addressed some of the topics we were focusing on in schools like growth mindset and critique and revision. Looking back this experience has really cleared the fog around architecture and has helped me grow my understanding of what I might want to after college. I think that even though this job shadow project was really challenging, I was able to get so much out of it. This really has been a life changing experience that I will never forget