Anzie Gilmore (2004)

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Baby on Board
By Anzilla “Anzie” Gilmore
Licensed 2004

I attended Prairie View A&M University, an HBCU located 50 miles outside of Houston, Texas. HBCU’s have nurturing and support dyed in the wool. But what PVAMU’s School of Architecture (SOA) did not have was very many licensed architects on faculty, and not one black female architect to serve as a role model. So I graduated from PVAMU, bound for graduate school with the plan to follow in the footsteps of the most successful person I knew in architecture, the dean of our school, Dr. Ikhlas Sabouni. Dr. Sabouni or “Doc” as we called her then, was stylish, she held a Ph.D. in architecture and she was the boss. She had not taken the A.R.E. because she did not need to. In my eyes, neither did I. So I went to the University of Texas at Arlington and emerged a year and a half later with my master’s degree, the credential I needed to teach architecture. Continue reading →

Creig Hoskins (1991)

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Positive You Will Pass
By Creig Hoskins
Licensed 1991

Three years after graduating from college I took the ARE. During my era, it was given once a year, taken by hand, and all in the same week. The building design lasted 12 hours and was given the last day. I did not study the first time I took the exam and failed everything except the graphic portions. I thought since I worked at a great firm that provided me excellent training and I traditionally have always scored high on standardized tests, I said to myself, “Self, there is no need to study, you are smart.” Continue reading →

Annette Carter (2004)

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Get What You Came For
By Annette K. Carter
Licensed 2004

Art history class at Boston Latin Academy is where it all started in my adolescence. In this class, we learned about things as disparate as the history of Chinese calligraphy, the artistry of American quilting, and Impressionist painters. A seemingly tedious task of selecting three artists’ names out of a hat would have a tremendous impact on my life.

As luck would have it, one of the three “artists” I randomly selected was Frank Lloyd Wright. At age 12, after researching and learning about Mr. Wright and his work in the fascinating field of architecture as both a science and an art, I decided that I would become an architect when I grew up.  I considered no other careers from this moment on. 

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Calvin McCargo Jr (2017)

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Two – Eleven
By Calvin McCargo Jr
DesignHAND Architects
Licensed 2017

Becoming an architect was a dream of mine since I was in elementary school. I was always intrigued by beautiful buildings and the way they would make me feel when looking at them or walking through them. I wanted to be the person that created those spaces. Of course, I did not realize what it would take to become an architect until after a few years in undergraduate school but that did not deter me from my dream. My initial thought was that I would go to school, get my degree, and become an architect. Then I found out that the path is not that simple. Continue reading →

Ya Vaughn Harlston (2020)

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Daybreak
By Ya Vaughn Harlston
Licensed 2020

Getting licensed was important to me because I dreamed of being an Architect since I was 10 years old. I also want to pursue additional certifications which I could not do until I had completed my ARE exam and become a licensed Architect. My ultimate career goal is to become a board-certified Healthcare Architect and become a board member in a hospital. My friend/mentor, Bryan Hudson, guided me in starting the NCARB account so that I could start my Intern Development Program (IDP), now known as Architectural Experience Program (AXP), and eventually take the ARE exam. Continue reading →

Stephanie Harris (2013)

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By Any Means Necessary!
By Stephanie Harris
Licensed 2013

For Stephanie Harris, getting her license was a task that she felt that anyone who wanted to be an Architect must do. However, her path through the examination process was not always straight and not always easy. She has spent all of her professional career working in Atlanta, Georgia. When she started her exams, she was at a small firm without a lot of resources. They had a few Kaplan books but no formal program for those working through their exams. Stephanie took it upon herself to figure out how to make it through.

Stephanie considers herself savvy and resourceful. She had heard that for the space planning exam, your design did not have to be pretty, you just had to meet the program requirements. She decided to take this as her first exam. She practiced with the software and used the reviewers on (the now defunct) ARE Forum to get critiques. Studying was difficult because she lived in an apartment with noisy neighbors and city life. Her regimen was to study from 2am to 6am before work when it was quiet. After three weeks, she attempted the exam and passed. This gave Stephanie a huge confidence boost. She quickly went on to take Material and Methods thinking it would be easy and learned that it was not and failed. Continue reading →

Angela King (2016)

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The Pink Elephant In My Path
Angela King
Licensed 2016

We avoid the “elephant in the room” and sometimes discuss “eating the elephant one bite at a time.” Both expressions are more than appropriate for the gargantuan task of becoming an Architect. For me, it was a pink elephant slowly consumed over my first 33 years.

My journey to becoming an architect was actually pretty linear from school to working in design firms to architectural registration exams. I think it is for most. Architecture is not really a profession one falls into. It’s a calling. It starts perhaps with legos or seeing plans in books or passing by construction sites. Some are fortunate enough to know an architect. For me, it was a mix of my relationship with space as a child and my father the mason. I was exposed to both drawing sets and construction sites as the daughter of a bricklayer. I am a daddy’s girl and, as a kid, wanted to stay up under him all the time. While I had no desire to actually do what he did, I was utterly fascinated with the plans he worked from to build the homes. The idea that one could envision space on paper and then construct a building out of it was magical. My career choice is perhaps also a nod to the lego sets that I played with that equally kept my attention. Continue reading →

Kevin Sneed (1995)

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The Journey Does Not End – Taking the ARE Exam
By Kevin Sneed
Licensed 1995

When asked to share my story of taking the ARE exam, I explained to Katherine that my account is possibly the most senior of all she had requested. However, she explained that it’s the experience of how I passed that she would like to impart to the readers, not the details of study materials from years ago. So, to start, as I combed through my past registration paperwork (which I still had!), I found a quote from my grandmother on a note from one of many phone calls with her. An educator, she always believed in me. She said, “You are going to pass; the question is when.” My grandmother further explained that I have the education, and I gained the necessary experience (IDP now AXP), all that was left for me to do was to make…time. Continue reading →

Richard Lyew (2011)

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Don’t Let Life Get in the Way, (if possible…)
By Richard Lyew
Licensed 2011

During my architecture internships, I heard stories from other architects who waited too long to take their exams and ultimately never did because life got in the way. Once I started my first job out of grad school I was determined to pass the exams as soon as possible. I settled down in Atlanta after my studies in Illinois. I was never one to study in groups, but it just so happened that I ran into a fellow UIUC grad, Thomas Allen, who had also moved to Atlanta. Continue reading →

Saundra Little (2002)

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The A.R.E. Exams saved my life!
(Like the song “Last night a DJ saved my life“)
By Saundra Little
Licensed 2002

I was very reluctant to write my story for Archstories because I knew I would have to revisit my circumstances during my exam test-taking timeframe. My story of passing my licensing exams is a story of Faith in the middle of adversity.

My resume and credentials do not show the pain behind the scenes in April 2001 when I started my A.R.E. exams. I was in the middle of a horrible divorce and studying for my architectural license at the same time. Studying was my way of focusing on something other than all the troubles surrounded my family at the time. My goal was to focus on anything but my current situation and work towards a better life for my daughter after all of this was over. Continue reading →