u/StudiousEra

I’m a Master of Landscape Architecture Student who is not interested in design, but interested in grading and stormwater management.

How can I tailor my application, whether resumé, or portfolio to begin a career in civil engineering? Can I “intern” at an AEC firm after I get my degree? I don’t have much practical experience with CAD professionally, but I will be continuing a year long part-time internship at a design studio. I won’t have the CAD experience on the position, so should I work on conceptual CAD documents to bolster my portfolio? Should I get certifications related to CAD, Civil3D, and/or Revit?

I really seriously want to make the transition, even if I have to take some community classes for instance.

If you recently graduated from a B.Arch, M.Arch or any architecture degree, I would like to know what you're up to and whether you feel content, whether you pursued architecture, are currently seeking employment, or pivoted elsewhere.

I am 2 years into a 3 years Master's program and I feel like I have lost all passion for what I initially studied in addition to extreme burnout. My graduate education experience has been incredibly intense to the point that for the first year I spent somewhere between twelve to eighteen hour days being physically present in school for literally the entire academic year including weekends and holidays. The second year got a bit better than that where I was averaging nine to fourteen hour days on average, with sometimes more in between but I still never experienced a true weekend.

I'm not doing well academically. Being in a professional master's program, my grades are mediocre, and I cannot seem to get hired for any sort of internship. My passion is gone at this point. I am spending so many hours managing bureaucracy with my admin over my graduation requirements, and they're asking me to literally put in hundreds of hours for petitions and appeals. I know I'm being vague, but I just want to get the point across that I hate the life that I set up for myself. Being in six figure debt for a degree I no longer want to participate in and with a department that does not allow me to even explore employability outside of a very narrow subspecialty industry that pays extremely little. I also no longer have friendships with anyone in my program outside of a professional working environment where we tolerate each other when needed. I've had falling outs with friends in my program and don't have the bandwidth to maintain friendships outside of academic life. My loved ones experienced a natural disaster recently, and even as I was posting about it online trying to raise awareness and express my grief, I realized truly nobody that I see in this graduate school setting cares about me. They would watch my Instagram story for a few seconds and then just remain silent, almost no one even expressed sympathy.

Even when the academic work feels meaningful and rewarding, and I recognize there have been some successes that show a promising future if given the right mentorship and opportunities... I feel an extreme sense of dissatisfaction and soullessness not just in the moment but also post-graduation life. I feel a certain reputation that I'm a laughing stock in my program or maybe in life for pursuing such an expensive and low ROI degree (in hindsight). I'm tired of being valued by performance, it's cost me my health and I have expensive out-of-pocket medical bills to show for it. My self-esteem is in the trenches. I feel like I struggle to have "ambition".

Can someone tell me it gets better after graduating? Ideally, I want to grow apart from my cohort mates and professors because I have literally depended on their approval to advance in my program. I know I have to maintain professional acquaintanceship with all of them for the most part, but I hope to seriously disentangle myself from them after I graduate. I'm tired of chasing a ladder of achievements which have only left me empty.

Ideally, I want to move back in with my family because for once in my life I genuinely miss them. Their health has been on a progressive decline and I don't know how much longer I will have with them. I don't care if the world views me as a failure for moving back home and not having a fancy title or glamorous sounding job attached to me post-graduation, I just want to feel like I have a soul again. I figuratively feel I need a fresh start rather than blindly trying to figure out where to go with my career from here. Maybe, I'm not as lost as I feel in the moment, but I feel like a failure everyday who is absentminded and empty even when I'm in a productivity mode.

What can I do post-grad life to feel more like a human being? How do I heal from measuring my worth in such a toxic and physically exhausting environment all these years? Has anyone chosen a less glamorous path for true happiness as opposed to continuing career ambitions. I say all this especially because every single professional I've met in my field, I do not want their life. Work completely consumes their life to the point where none of them can have families or even go home at normal 9-5 hours. There has to be more to a "successful" life than this.

I'm a current Master student studying architecture/landscape architecture with a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science. I have come to realize that I do not like architecture/landscape architecture for a myriad of reasons and was wondering if it's even possible for me to get a Master of Civil Engineering down the line somehow?

My B.S. had really minimal biology classes, one minor physics class that probably does not even count, I did not take a chemistry or mathematics course in college ever. I do however, appreciate, grading, topographic calculations, working on drainage, etc. I know I have a lot of catching up to do, and mathematics was never particularly my strongsuit, but I found a newfound purpose in how its application can be utilized in landscape architecture/civil engineering the last few years.

I suppose I have time to figure out if civil engineering is really more in line with me through working at a civil engineering firm given my existing skillset, but I still wanted to ask this subreddit on their opinion. Can I take community college classes to brush up on basics of calculus, CE classes, etc.? Does anyone have testimonies on people who made the transition themselves? I'd appreciate any advice. Thank you! I'm based in California.

edited for typos.