Picture this: You’re leaving your East Village dorm room, bodega coffee in hand, profusely sweating in the July heat while you make your daily trek to the Empire State Building. Swirling above you are the tops of magnificent buildings, some gorgeous, some painfully ugly — and you can name some of their architects. After a long day of corresponding with architects, selecting photos, writing news clips, and arranging layouts, you retreat to your friend’s rooftop to watch the sun set brilliantly over the city skyline. Maybe you left in the middle of the day to hear from journalists at a publication like The New Yorker or The New York Times Style Magazine — or maybe you ate your PB&J at your desk, overwhelmed with landscape projects to select for the August issue or InCopy decided to quit just as you finished up the Table of Contents. If someone had told me a few months ago that my summer would look like this, I would not have believed them.

 

I’ve been so lucky to intern at Architectural Record, America’s oldest design publication. Through the experience, I’ve taken on lots of editorial responsibility, lending a visual and written sense to the work we do. My supervisor here likes to say that putting together a magazine is like building a Rolls Royce from scratch every month. It’s a luxury product that takes unfathomable levels of care for those who aren’t familiar with the process. Guided by incredible co-workers and mentors, I’m proud to say I’ve helped put together three Rolls Royces. I’ve also effectively run the magazine’s Instagram account and helped with the editorial calendar, dictating our plans for the year ahead.

 

I’m from New York, but I haven’t spent the summer working here since college started. Being immersed in my home city, feeling truly a part of my dream industry for the first time, after a chaotic semester as Editor in Chief of my college newspaper, was exactly the breath of fresh air I needed. My background leans heavily towards newspapers because of my love for fast-paced news. In my most recent role as Editor in Chief of The Tufts Daily, I worked with a close-knit team to arbitrate all visual and written components of a daily print paper, and my responsibilities included keeping our social media updated and staying abreast of breaking news. Before that, I wrote for the daily Metro US newspaper. Under the Features editor for New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, I wrote content for all three cities’ papers. But this experience in magazines brought me closer to what I feel I’m cut out to do. It has tied together my studio art minor and my studies in cultural history with my career aspirations in journalism, teaching me that I’ll need to be creative to be fulfilled. My writing skills must have a visual complement.

 

The summer was wildly eventful and full of twists and turns. As it comes to a close, I’m reflecting on what I’ve learned — about the media industry in general and architectural journalism in particular — and the incredible people I’ve met. I have no doubt that memories of my experience this summer will remain with me indefinitely and will shape my career path in ways I cannot yet foresee.