[Porsche-O-Phile]

I don't like the word "regret". I don't have regrets for anything I've done, but honestly if I could do it all again with the knowledge and experience I've gained to date, I'd do a few things differently:

First off, I think getting right out of high school at age 18 as a smartass punk kid and thinking I'd be fine in college was stupid. I changed majors which cost me an extra year and about another $15k in expenses. This could have been avoided if I'd been a bit more sure of myself and what I wanted to do before I'd started college. As such if I had to do it again, I'd have gone into the service at age 18, stayed for 4 years and THEN gone to college. This way I'd have had my head on straight, been sure of what I wanted to do and (most likely) still gotten my B.S. in aeronautics, but I'd have gotten it in 4 (or fewer) years and on the GI Bill (free, or certainly discounted). I'd have been out at age 26 with all the same skills, background, ratings and experience necessary to succeed. I'd also have had the benefit of military service history, which is never a bad thing.

Instead of getting into airport planning and design after graduation, I'd have aggressively pursued a flying job (i.e. instructing or commercial flying) right away. I did end up doing these things years later (and I'm getting back into it now), but if I'd done it right after I graduated instead of deciding to go into design work and ultimately pursue a graduate degree in architecture, I'd probably have gone a lot further in aviation. I do think that "hedging" myself in two different areas as I did was smart, but today I question if I put too much time/energy/money/emphasis into my architectural training. I got out of undergrad in 1995. If I'd done the military service route as I suggested above I'd have gotten out in 1997 - not much different. If I'd gone "balls to the wall" into aviation right then, I'd have had decent experience "in industry" (4+ years) by the time 9/11 happened and wiped out a lot of the flying jobs. No guarantee I'd have made it through the ensuing downturn/recession without a furlough or layoff, but if not, it'd have THEN been a good time to go back and get my second degree or to pursue something else for a while, rather than doing it from 1996-1999 as I did.

Another thing I'd do differently is that I'd absolutely not have pursued my graduate degree in architecture. I love the practice of design and I'm good at it, but it's a crappy industry populated by too many liars, cheats, manipulators and snake-oil salesmen with little or no vision and who can't think beyond their own next boat payment - certainly not what's in the best interest of our industry/profession as a whole and our social responsibilities. It's a dying profession (sadly) that is badly misunderstood by the public and which can't get out of its own way. By this I mean that there's no organized effort to increase public understanding and awareness of what exactly architects do and why we're necessary. Instead most developers (stupidly) assume that all the technical knowledge can be done by either engineers or construction managers, and architects are simply overhead to be cut out when/where ever possible ("all they really do is make pretty pictures and pick colors, right?") And when you get a "professional society" like the AIA which only knows how to pat itself on the back and invent new awards to kiss the asses of its own (paying) members year after year in order to suck up to them in order to get them to renew rather than lobbying for better protections of the profession and looking out for what's in its collective best interest, it pisses me the hell off. The AIA is an organization which epitomizes everything wrong with the profession - it's extremely full of itself and focuses on EXACTLY the wrong things. We're our own worst enemies. There's no way I'd have gotten my master's in architecture again. Not a chance. It took way too long, cost way too much and ultimately has done nothing to help me out in the current economy (construction/development is D-E-A-D and it's not coming back anytime soon thanks to the housing bubble and its associated scheisters - residential developers, agents, lenders, etc.) Any industry even remotely connected to it is in trouble for a long time (and unfortunately this includes architectural design). So forget it. I'm done.

I'm grateful for the opportunity to have gone to graduate school and for the doors it opened for me, but in retrospect I think I'd have stuck with flying airplanes. I'm good at it, it comes naturally and when I look back on all the jobs I've had in my life, I was the most happy, satisfied and content when I was flying. It paid poorly (one of the reasons I walked away from it once) and by contrast when things were good, I was making damn good money as an architectural project manager, but ultimately looking back on it, it wasn't nearly as fulfilling. It's just riding a desk dealing with a bunch of (mostly) cheapass imbiciles with big egos and attitudes and trying to get them to STFU and do their damn jobs and get a simple sequence of tasks done in the proper order, as they've agreed to do. It's not very rewarding work, honestly. When I was flying cargo, I had my reward every time the wheels went "chirp" on the runway at the end of a successful flight/mission. I miss those days. I hope to have them back soon.

I'll probably still do some architectural work on my own time, but only as a side venture. I think I'm done doing it as a career. Not really where my heart is anymore and I'm thankful that I know there's something else out there I can do (and I have the experience/background/licenses for) for my bread-and-butter, while being able to still do my design work for myself as a hobby of sorts.

I guess the short version of all this is I'd probably end up in more-or-less the same place as I expect I will, but I'd have done it in a way that was a bit more logical and didn't put me through such expense and abuse in order to get there. There was a simpler path to get to the same destination and while I don't regret my journey, I'd probably have worked harder trying to find that particular path if I had to do it again...