Boston Society of Landscape Architects Spring Fieldbook Volume 14.1 | Page 36

Student Essay / Northeastern University

B eco m i n g It

“Don’t fake it ’til you
make it. Fake it ’til you
become it.”

The words of social
psychologist Amy

Don’t fake it ’til you make it. Fake it ’til
you become it.”

Cuddy relate to matters
well outside of social
insecurities. To me, they
relate directly to my
goals as a landscape
architecture major at
Northeastern University.

I strive to ‘become it’
by following a two-fold
trajectory of experience
and education,
balancing academic demands with professional expectations.
The Urban Landscape Program at Northeastern overcomes
the potential disconnect between school and work with a
pre-professional attitude and experiential learning co-ops. My
degree strengthens my career, while my [premature] career
strengthens my degree.

How did I end up as a landscape architecture major at
Northeastern? I am lucky to have a mom, dad, brother, and
sister who all are accountants – a situation that compelled
me to define my ‘degree’ as a pragmatic skill -- but in the
creative field of landscape architecture, I see problem
solving in a different light than they might. This approach
has been reinforced by my experiences inside and outside of
the classroom. For example, technical as well as conceptual
knowledge I’ve gained as a landscape student allows me
to help solve complexities in the urban realm while in my
co-op positions. I find that my work continually builds on my
multifaceted degree as it evolves technically but also requires
ongoing reinterpretation of skills and personal experiences.

The fusion of practical and conceptual training, of concrete
and theoretical understandings of the designed environment, is
helpful to me as I pursue my personal interest in urban mobility.
For example, for our Urban Sites studio last year, I visited the
site (Derby Square, Salem) multiple times in order to observe
and evaluate the fluctuation of pedestrian traffic from ‘crowded’
Tuesdays to ‘desolate’ Thursdays. While I counted users,
recorded directionality, density and spatial orientation, I also
documented the less explicit qualities that defined the place.
Similarly, earlier this year during my study abroad in Berlin, my
personal meandering led me to a design inspiration. A simple

‘Molly’ Mary McNally
walk down the street with trams, cars, and bicyclists streaming by
stimulated a strategy to extend the existing multi-modal equality
and transportation network. From the macro public scale to the
micro human experience, integrating personal experience into
contextual analysis gave me an appreciation of the role that
personal sensitivity could play in my professional career.

In many ways, my degree itself is a design challenge. I use
existing conditions (my learned knowledge) to develop new
approaches (my professional aspirations). At the same time my
emerging design interests transcend the limits of the classroom
in my search for innovative, technical, and contextual methods.
My degree is a base upon which deliberate (technological/
physical) and organic (creative/experiential) abilities will
develop well into my professional career. It is a foundation that
provides confidence, strengthening the talents I have, while
acknowledging those I don’t. Accepting my limitations is not
a restriction but an encouragement to read the potential in
other resources - whether it is people, places, or things – to
expand my knowledge base exponentially. For example, as a
co-op student in the Economic Planning and Development
Department at Massport, what I currently lack in professional
experience I can compensate for with technological capability,
such as my proficiency in Adobe Suite or AutoCAD, as well as
extracurricular experience - remember the accountants? I never
t