Getting Licensed

I didn’t pursue getting licensed for six years after I left college. In retrospect I’m not sure why I waited so long. Probably on some level I just didn’t feel like I knew enough to call myself an architect until then. That title and all that went with it meant a great deal to me. When I did get my license I wanted to feel like I knew what I was doing.

Getting permission to take the test in Florida was an unnecessary hurdle. The State of Florida education coordinator at the time had been passed over for dean of the college of architecture at the University of Florida and had an ax to grind. The hoops that the Tallahassee bureaucrats made me jump through were beyond unreasonable. After a lot of foolishness, I was finally cleared to take the test after dickering around with the state for five months! I wasn’t the only one who had to go through this nonsense. A lot of other U of F grads had similar problems.

Since I wasn’t sure I would even be able to take the test that year, I didn’t bother to study until I knew for sure I could take it. When I finally received notice there was less than a month before the testing date so that was all I studied. I passed six out of nine sections (all in the ninety percentile range). The only sections I failed were the ones I didn’t have time to study for. I remember I took the test the first time on my 30th birthday. Testing lasted from eight in the morning until five with an hour for lunch. It was the first time testing had literally given me a headache.

I remember coming home on the first day of the test and finding my fellow Forum employees had taped a bunch of black balloons and a birthday card to my apartment door. My nose still hurt from a water skiing accident the week before that left me with thirty two stitches two black eyes and a nose broken in three places. But at least I was on my way toward getting my license.

The building design section on the last day lasted all day. You brought in all your drafting equipment and drew for twelve hours straight! Lunch was at your option. It was brutal. One of my friends in LA heard of candidates freaking out in the middle of the test and having to be removed. During the test one proctor snatched my calculator away from me, convinced I had something stashed in the case. Of course I hadn't but it sure threw me off.

At the time, they only offered the entire test once a year in June and Structures, Site Design and Building Design (the most commonly failed sections) were offered again in the winter. Since I was already working on a computer and the test wasn't computerized, I had a heck of a time drawing fast enough to pass the design sections of the test. The last time I took it, they had the design section on the computer and I passed without a problem. I don’t want to sound like a codger but taking it on computer in sections when you want is easier than the old system. I’m glad for those coming along that it’s changed as it was a crummy way to test. It was designed to hold the numbers down.

Getting the license is just a milepost on the long journey to being a good architect. There is so much to know in this business and there is a good reason that they call it an old man’s profession. It seems like every day I learn something new. If you are open to it, almost every project can teach you something new.