Ending a wonderful experience as a winter extern at Landworks Studio this past December, where I worked on amazing projects both locally and internationally, I knew that if the opportunity to work for Landworks Studio over the summer was an option I would take it. After receiving my acceptance as a summer intern in February, I was ecstatic and ready for a wonderful summer on the Northeastern coast. Unfortunately March came and with it so did COVID-19, and the world began to shut down. By the end of this past May with everything going on in the world, I was honestly doubting I was even going to have a job for the summer because due to the COVID outbreak a lot of my friends who I graduated with lost their internships and even full time jobs. So when I was contacted and reassured that the internship program would be moving forward I was extremely overjoyed even if it would be remote.
At first I was happy just to have a job, but as I thought about the tasks of zoom meetings all day just to communicate with everyone, being in a different time zone, and the fact I would be by myself all day in a home office, I panicked slightly. The balancing of work, meetings, and calls with staying healthy and making sure to leave the house once a day became an instant challenge, but these new tasks allowed me to grow as a professional and learn to quickly adapt and manage my time more than I thought I could. Right out the gate, even though it was virtual, I connected really well with the other interns Jamie and Magic, and I felt that we all adapted to each other's strengths and weaknesses to drive how we would accomplish tasks each day. Even though my main focus of the summer was working on the Shenzhen Railyard, I still enjoyed connecting with Jamie and Magic and helping with small parts of the international competition when I could up until the end.
Working on the Shenzhen project at first seemed like it was going to be a huge challenge both scale and communication wise, but I had confidence in my 3D modeling, drawing, and communication skills, which helped me really enjoy the design process and even allowed me to push my skills boundaries and learn new techniques when modeling the unique topography. However, the greatest accomplishment/reward I had from the whole summer ended up being from the last 48 hours of my internship helping wrap up the competition materials. Even though the workload was indeed heavy, I enjoyed the late nights and weekend chats from everyone who jumped in to help with the final push, from editing drawings to perfecting the 3D model to redoing the trees a thousand times in the plan. Most importantly I was able to utilize a new skill of video editing I had just learned in a couple months to help bring Mike's design for the competition to life through his beautiful sketches and produce a 2 minute video that I believe really sold the essence of the concept. All of this was just a wonderful, humbling experience that I couldn't get anywhere else.