Giving Myself Grace
By Nakita Reed
Licensed 2013
I grew up in the DC area and when I was younger I didn’t understand why I saw homeless people sleeping outside vacant buildings. Younger me thought homelessness was a building problem for architects to solve; so from an early age, I wanted to be an architect to fix up existing buildings. I took some drafting classes in high school and thought becoming an architect was just a matter of time for me. I started my IDP hours after undergraduate, finished my Master’s degree and then moved to Blacksburg, VA with my fiance. In 2010, I started working at AECOM in Roanoke, VA and felt like I was ready to start climbing the corporate ladder. I thought I would stay at AECOM for many years, but life got complicated, then really simple.
My father, his wife, and her sister were killed by a drunk driver in June 2011. This accident changed the course of my life and how I wanted to show up in the world. I felt my mortality and realized that time was short. I felt like I needed to do everything that I wanted to as fast as possible. I was coping with the grief the best way I knew how… therapy and lots of distractions. The most constructive distraction I came up with was to start taking my AREs.
I started testing while I worked at AECOM in Roanoke. Many of my coworkers had just finished their exams and were incredibly supportive. I completed all the paperwork needed and applied to start testing in September of 2011. Studying became a way for me to distract myself from my emotional pain. I took the approach of scheduling the exams and then studying for them, because I knew if I waited to schedule the exam when I ‘felt’ ready then I was never going to complete the tests. I took four exams between September 2011 and March 2012. I passed the first three but failed the fourth.
In December 2011, I reconnected with a former mentor and boss and we decided that we would start a new architecture practice together that would focus on historic preservation and sustainability. I left AECOM in April 2012 and moved to Maryland with my fiance to be closer to my family. We moved in May and the rest of the year was a blur as we got married, honeymooned, and I started a business.
I didn’t start testing again until 2013. I beat myself up a lot for taking time off, but I also had to remind myself that although I wanted to do everything as fast as possible, it was impossible to do everything at the same time. The point of life was to enjoy the journey not just check off boxes. I had to learn to give myself some grace (thank you therapy!).
What motivated me to start testing again was a combination of wanting to be ‘official’, a desire to keep learning, and a little bit of spite. My former business partner was a licensed, older, white male architect. When we started the business together, I focused on building the systems of the business, networking and doing the work. At the time, most of the work was historic tax credit projects and LEED Documentation. I was the majority owner because we wanted to set the firm up as a minority-owned business. However, since I wasn’t licensed, was young, black, and female, the majority of older architects I met dismissed me as the business owner. Even though I had two master’s degrees, somehow people weren’t able to reconcile I could be an entrepreneur if I wasn’t a licensed architect. I got tired of having to prove that I was the business owner, in reality and not just on paper.
I started scheduling my exams again in mid-2013, and I finished my last exam in December of 2013. I was excited, relieved, and surprisingly a little scared to be done with the exams. I was no longer striving to be an architect, I legally was one and had to figure out what that meant for me.
It’s hard to believe that it‘s been nine years since I was licensed. There have been so many twists and turns in my life since getting licensed, but I am so grateful for the journey.
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