Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Titles

I try to be as modest about our profession as politely possible, but there are some things that just get on my nerves.  For example, we toil away in architecture school for 5 years, fumble around in our new-found profession for 3 years of the required internship only to conclude our pre-licensed life with 7 excruciating registration exams.  Throughout the whole process, of course, constantly deciphering the new rules and regulations of an ever-changing path-to-licensure and construction industry, in general.  And all for what?  To call ourselves architects.

Meanwhile, there exist some computer nerds who spend a few months in an IT certification course that earns them the rights to be called software "architects" or systems "architects," or whatever charming prefacing noun you'd prefer to conjure.  I recently saw an article citing someone as "an architect of 'insert-written-document-title-here.'"  This little snippet, hopefully intended as a metaphor, was what set me off tonight.  I feel like we work so hard to earn that title, whereas some people just attach to their own lackluster professions in order to sound more important.  I feel like our profession is suffering enough lately, without all this terminology defamation to cloud the significance of the title "architect."

Anyway, that's just my little puff of smoke for today.  It just seems that our profession is so persistent in its preservation of the integrity of that title, all the while outside industries degrade it with such unbridled usage.

See more on titles here.

1 comment:

  1. RIGHT?!

    You wouldn't call it an "IT Mechanic" or an "IT Pathologist".

    Being an architect (a real one) is something you have to work for almost a decade to achieve. Aproximately 1/7th of your life, if not longer. I'm not sure it's a valid term for an IT employee who does not give the word the same creedance as those in the design profession.

    http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ly8tryEUpf1qb6ydzo3_250.gif

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