Dive into the world of architecture with Crayton Maurer, a dynamic force and our esteemed intern at CMBA Architects in 2023 who returned for another dive in 2024. Join us in this episode as Crayton shares the fascinating journey that led him to pursue a career in architecture and the enriching experiences he gained during his internship at CMBA. Get a glimpse into the innovative projects and challenges that have shaped Crayton's perspective on architectural design. Discover how emerging talents like Crayton are contributing fresh ideas and creativity to the ever-evolving field of architecture.
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Episode Transcript
Skyler: Welcome to another episode of laying the foundation.
Skyler: Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the laying the foundation podcast. I'm your host Skylar. And today I'm joined with another one of our wonderful summer interns from the 2023 year. I've got Creighton Maurer with me sitting in here in the, in the room out here in grand Island where you're kind of stationed at.
Skyler: Thanks for being on the show. Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me. Yeah, absolutely. So Creighton, tell me a little bit about yourself. You know, where you come from, how you got into architecture, what, you know, what brought you here?
Clayton: Yeah. So I'm from Hastings, Nebraska. It's town just south of grand Island here.
Clayton: Um, drive in every, every morning. Um, I, uh, I would say, you know, I've started getting into architecture even if I didn't know it when I was super young. Oh, okay. Just little things here and there, you know, everyone's got the Legos, the Minecraft. It's about how my generation right now, everybody in class says.
Clayton: Oh, how'd you get in? Oh, it's always Minecraft. Minecraft. That's how they get in there, yeah. Um, I would, I would say that that was part of it too, but I've always been, um, just interested in, in design and how spaces come together. Yeah. I would sketch out layouts of dream houses. Oh, sure. As a kid. And it's, it's always piqued, piqued my interest.
Clayton: And then in high school I took, um, it was three years of an engineering course. Take finally, you could take a senior year architecture course, which was an interesting setup, but, um, that's how it was. And so of course I did it. And, um, there were two of us in that class. Oh, really? Yep. There were two of us.
Clayton: Um, and so I actually obviously had further pursued that. And, um, I go to KU right now.
Skyler: Oh, okay. Very
Clayton: cool. Uh, down in Lawrence, Kansas. So we're having a lot of fun down there. Awesome. Um, but I mean, that's. It's kind of where what's led me back to, to here being at the, um, the, uh, architecture career fair that KU puts on.
Clayton: And there were hundreds of firms there, right? Hundreds of firms. And I had, um, they, they give you a list of who all is going to be there. So you can kind of look into them and figure them out and do a little pre research. Yeah. Do a little pre research and, um, see who you might want to talk to. And I had a list of, 40 ones that I was just kind of interested in.
Clayton: And, um, and then I came across one CMBA and they had a Grand Island office. I'm like, Oh, well, I didn't, I didn't know of CMBA beforehand. It's close to town. And I'm like, okay, better talk to them. Yeah. Yeah. And so I did. And Ended up here. Here we are. The rest is, the rest is history. Rest is history. That's right.
Clayton: So
Skyler: Hastings, how far is that from, from Grand Island? Hastings,
Clayton: it's a 30 minute drive. I want to say it's 20 miles. Sure. Okay. Very cool. Very cool. It's not too far. Yeah. I can be out my door and in my desk in 30 minutes. Nice.
Skyler: Oh yeah. No, that's not terrible. Yeah. Sweet. Yeah. No, that's perfect. And like, you know, cost of living expenses and stuff goes way down when you really like live that close.
Skyler: So yeah, that's always nice.
Clayton: It's always nice to come back home and, you know, Live with mom for the summer. Yeah. Yeah.
Skyler: There you go. Spend some time with family. Do the, do the, the commute and yeah. Yeah. Get some, get some kick into the, into the internship. Sweet. So, um, since you've been here, what kind of stuff have you had the opportunity to work on?
Skyler: What kind of projects did you work on or, you know, within those projects, what kind of stuff did you get to do within those?
Clayton: Yeah. So I've worked on several projects so far, had a little Um, all of the ones we're doing right now, a couple of cafeteria renovations. So we've gotten to go on site to the meetings, making decisions right there in the spot.
Clayton: And it was really cool to see at the beginning of the summer cause they were just starting to demolish everything in there and get ready to start putting all the new stuff in. And so I kind of saw what it looked like beforehand. And now we're towards the end of the summer to where They're finishing it.
Clayton: They're painting. They're putting in all the last little details. And so that's been really cool to see like these quick turnarounds. Yeah, absolutely. It's like this, and especially cafeterias, you have to have those. You gotta have that. You can't. No, where are they going to eat? Exactly. You know, you can't just have them no lunch.
Clayton: Yeah. That's crazy. So we've done that and now we're doing a school edition. So Um, getting to see right now, they're, uh, they got the walls up mostly, um, that'll be finished next summer before school starts. And so, um, that'll be a longer process that hopefully next summer we can come back and start to see the end of that and have that one kind of wrap up.
Clayton: And, um, we've had some administration things that I've done for those, um, some more tedious things, but it's all part of the job. That's right. That's something that at the, um, It's career fair when Kirsten was like, you know, we try and get everybody to try out everything that we do, get you the whole rounded experience.
Clayton: And so I'm glad that I've been able to get a part of that. Yeah. Um, I've also worked on an athletic complex, this little stadium area. We're doing all the construction documents for that right now. So getting through all of that, we've worked on, um, just designs for performing arts center. Um, um, just really done a little bit of everything.
Clayton: Yeah.
Skyler: Awesome. That's always good. You know, get your, get your feet wet in a lot of different areas, get your hands on a lot of different, you know, aspects of everything and make sure that. Yeah, it's,
Clayton: it's exactly what I wanted coming into this. And what I told them, you know, I had heard of even some of my friends are like, I did door details all summer.
Clayton: I did cabinet details all summer. I'm like, that is not what I want to do. Exactly. I do not want to do that. No. So it piqued my interest a lot when they had said, We do really try and get you guys to do everything.
Skyler: Yeah, absolutely. So it sounds like you went into this, you know, kind of having some personal goals of like what kind of stuff you wanted to experience and achieve throughout the internship.
Skyler: What would you say that from, from the entirety of the experience was your like most beneficial takeaway or probably something that you feel like is going to be such a big part moving forward.
Clayton: The one thing that has been the most beneficial to me so far this summer is The knowledge of Revit that I started to gain coming into this.
Clayton: I knew some basics, right? And I knew that I would either be teaching myself a lot at night, or hopefully there would be people here to super help me out
Skyler: cross fingers.
Clayton: And everybody here is super willing to help and we'll show you, and they will get you there to the point that you need to be to get whatever it is done.
Clayton: And so that has been super beneficial to me. Very cool. I'll hopefully. I will get better skills at school when we're working on drawings there and getting everything done.
Skyler: Yeah. Yeah. That's what that's basically, I know we're, you know, two different areas. You've got your architecture direction, whereas I was in marketing, but.
Skyler: Same concept applied. And that's what they told me was learn the software and you become, you know, a pretty big asset, honestly, like all around. So awesome. Very cool. So, um, when you kind of were looking at internship opportunities, looking at the different firms and anything, was there any kind of like underlying nervousness or fear about like, Oh, what, what does it mean to be in an internship?
Skyler: What am I going to, what, what do I expect or what should I expect? Or am I ready? Or, you know, any, what was going through your mind? Yeah.
Clayton: Yeah. So, I mean, my biggest fear, I guess, was like, will I succeed at this? Right. Because, I mean, this is kind of the point to where I hadn't had any experience in an office before or a firm.
Clayton: And so, I mean, this was kind of the point to where I realized in my head, if this works, then great, I'm on the right path. But if it doesn't, then oh God, what am I going to do? Right, right. Okay. Okay. It's been Awesome. It's been way better than I would have expected. I know we're on the right path. Yes. Good.
Clayton: Yeah, for sure. I, uh, I was definitely nervous about that, but even more so, like, I mean, I knew that I could do a lot of things that we do here as an architecture firm,
Skyler: but I didn't
Clayton: necessarily know to what level things. Like I know that, you know, we have site visits, we have meetings with clients, but I've never been right to any of those.
Clayton: And so I didn't know exactly what to expect. And, um, that was probably the number one thing that I was worried about is just how exactly is this going to work for me in my future?
Skyler: Right.
Clayton: Um, but the other thing that also had a backseat in my head was that whole Revit thing. Cause Revit, we just barely touched on it.
Clayton: In high school, my senior year, which was COVID year, right? And so we dabbled on it for like a month and then we got let out for, for school, for COVID. And so I'd barely touched it. And then our freshman year of college, they have a class where they're like, make this floor plan and rev it. But all it is is walls, right?
Clayton: So it's still kind of, they don't show you any, Detail stuff that Revit does or even roofs or floors or stairs. Like they didn't show us any of that. It was just do this in Revit. It was like a two week part of this course that tried to touch you on a lot of different programs. Okay. Um, but other than that, KU doesn't really give you direction as to what you should be using this, you should be using that, just say whatever you use best or can learn best, which is nice.
Clayton: But also some of the programs that we use there, right. They're not used in firms. So what's the point? Yeah, no, completely agree. Why would I spend all my time in this? And so, um, I had always been a little scared of Revit because it's a big program. Oh yeah. Yeah. I will never know the extents that everything Revit can do.
Clayton: And so it had always just scared me to try and even get into it. Yeah. So. That also is what had the backseat of my head and how I was worried and coming into this. But
Skyler: do you feel like a lot of those worries and such have been kind of, and I mean, you've kind of talked about with when, within your experiences that you've had and stuff, uh, put to rest to some extent.
Skyler: Yeah.
Clayton: Oh, for sure. Awesome. Yeah. Uh, the first, the first week I didn't do anything in Revit here. We just had some, we had some fun events and just get to know and to kind of see how the workflow was. And then that second week I was getting into Revit. Within a couple of days, realize that
Skyler: it's not as scary.
Clayton: No, it's not as scary. It's not nearly as scary. If you don't know something, someone's going to know how to do it. And if somebody doesn't know how to do it, there's a video of somebody doing
Skyler: it. Oh, thank goodness for YouTube. Exactly. Exactly. A lot of YouTube tutorials. A lot of YouTube. Yep. God sent. Yeah, absolutely.
Skyler: No, that's awesome.
AD: Attention architecture students. Are you looking for a hands on internship opportunity? That will provide you with real world experience and a competitive pay rate. Look no further than CMBA Architects. Our internship program offers flexible scheduling. A casual dress code and team building exercises to help you build valuable skills and connections in the industry.
AD: Plus, who doesn't love having Fridays off?
Skyler: To learn more about our internship program, visit the careers page at cmbaarchitects. com and spend your summer with CMBA. Would you, um, for anyone out there that's kind of in that same position that you were in where, you know, they're looking at internships and they might have like Some, some anxiety going on in their mind about the process of going into it and they don't know what to expect and all this other stuff.
Skyler: Um, what is like a big piece of advice that you would give to them as they're kind of contemplating the opportunity, but also kind of like the, the scary opportunity You could say? Yeah, take it. Okay.
Clayton: Right on. You
Skyler: just have to
Clayton: take it. You just jump right in. If you don't, I've always thought this, that if you don't.
Clayton: Try something.
Skyler: Yeah.
Clayton: You're never going to know. That's true. Maybe it would have worked out. Maybe it didn't. Right. But if you didn't try, you won't know.
Skyler: That's true.
Clayton: And if you fail, you can only learn from those failures. That's true. That's what I have always been told. And I've always firmly believed you have to fail to succeed.
Clayton: Yeah,
Skyler: absolutely. Absolutely, and it goes with what you said, like if I'm, if I am doing this wrong and I go into it, this will be what tells me that I'm doing, you know, this direction wrong and I need to veer to a different direction. So you, there's no point in just sitting there and, and continuing on the path very like cautiously and tiptoeing through and then getting to the end to find out that, Oh, I, I should have been doing something else or I could have changed something along the way and make it better or whatever the case, you just got to go for it, find out, and then veer based off of that.
Clayton: It could be as small as, and I mean, I've done this of making a mistake and, and Revit of how this drawing is set up or something. Well, then. comes over and shows me the right way to do it. And now I know that was an easy, easy, easy fail. And I just learned how to fix it. No big deal. Or, I mean, it could simply be as your first internship, you then realize that, Oh, this, this isn't for me.
Skyler: Yeah.
Clayton: So why would you try and push back until you're done with school and then go get a job? And Oh, I just wasted all these years now. Exactly. Exactly.
Skyler: Yeah. No, I completely agree. That's a, that's a really good point. Get into it, find out, get those experiences, find out what's, what's the right way and the wrong way to go and go with that.
Skyler: So awesome. Right on. Um, is there anything else that I haven't like touched on yet that you want to mention that, you know, like I said, any experiences or any kind of key things that have kind of popped up along the way during the internship that you were like, you really want to mention?
Clayton: I will say that, you know, you hear of places having a fun work environment of going out having lunch or whatever it is just about the company actually keeping everybody involved and turning it into a family, not just work partners or someone you just see at work.
Clayton: CMBA has done an incredible job and has made me, I can't speak for everybody, but they've at least made me feel like family. And we've done so many fun things and we just have such a great work environment here. Like over lunch, we were just all shooting each other. I was just going to say, I saw you guys with the Nerf
Skyler: blasters a second ago.
Skyler: When you're
Clayton: doing Carl's, we were all out there shooting each other and running around and hiding. And it's, it's so much fun to be a part of this. And, um, the interns, all of us here, there are five of us here. We've had a couple of game nights where we stay after hours and we sit in this conference room and we play board games and watch a movie and then we go out to eat.
Clayton: Like we've, I, they're all from UNL. Oh,
Skyler: okay.
Clayton: And I mean, they're all from this area, but went to UNL. I went to KU.
Skyler: Right. I
Clayton: didn't know any of them coming into this. Right. And they kind of knew of each other, but necessarily knew them. And so now we've just created this friendship all through. . CNBA.
Skyler: That's awesome.
Skyler: Yeah. I'm a little bit jealous of the game nights thing. That sounds like a lot of fun. It is funny all over that. I need to push for that at uh, at the Sux CD location. Yes, you do. Yeah. , I'm a big board games fan, so that sounds right. My own. I love board games. Awesome, awesome. Well, perfect. So, and you kind of already mentioned this already, but you found out about CNBA, you said through kind of the career fair.
Skyler: Mm-Hmm. . It was one of the places. Was there anything in particular that really popped out when you were looking through that list of all those different places and kind of doing that pre-research?
Clayton: Yeah, so. If you would have asked me at the very beginning in like January of this year, I still would have told you I'm probably going to end up in the Kansas city area.
Clayton: That's where I was looking for internships and stay down there with my friends down there or stay at my apartment, drive into KC, whatever it was. Um, and so the first thing when I clicked on CMBA was I noticed I had a Grand Island office because that was the first thing I was looking for is where are everybody's office.
Clayton: Of course. Yeah. And so it could I don't want to go to Colorado or Texas. Yeah. Like they had firms from, they had firms from everywhere there, which is nice. Yeah. But not for me. No. And so I noticed they had Grand Island. I'm like, Oh, well, okay. So I wrote them down and then I kind of narrowed it down from there and I went back to them and really started at least from the website, from what I could tell that it seemed like it was a fun place to be.
Clayton: And, um, I also didn't know necessarily what field that I would want to go into at the time. I had, I had no experience in any of it, so I was open to doing anything. Okay. Um, so CMBA, you know, mainly focuses on education and healthcare. Right. I'm like, well, here's an opportunity for, for that. And we end up doing a bunch of random projects that have nothing to do with either of those.
Clayton: Sure. But they're fun to work on and a new experience. Um, And so I stayed open to it and then went and talked to them at the career fair and they were fantastic. They were so fun to talk to. And there's just a long story of just, it's such a small world, but Kent was there with Kirsten. And I don't remember exactly how it is, but, um, somebody in Kent's family knows a friend of my grandma's.
Clayton: I grew up next to my mother, grew up next to, they live next to for years. And so my grandma knew that I went to this career fair before I told her, I went to the career fair just because of our names. Oh,
Skyler: okay. So yeah, it got Brett Kent brought it up to somebody who brought it up to somebody. It just
Clayton: happened to be that, um, that guy was visiting their house and called my grandma and said, your grandson was at the career fair and just met.
Clayton: Okay.
Skyler: That's so awesome.
Clayton: Yeah. Wow. You just never know who you're going to run into.
Skyler: Really comes down to that whole small world thing. You know, it's amazing. Like the people that we don't even realize that we know. And then we turns out we know them through like a series of people, but that's awesome.
Skyler: That's very cool. So awesome. Awesome. Well, creating, thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely. Sharing your experience with everybody out there. I think it's beneficial for everybody. Whether, whether they're looking to get an internship with CMBA or they're just looking into internship, you know, opportunities in general.
Skyler: I think it's really, really great to hear actual real life experiences from you guys. So awesome. Well, I appreciate it. Thank you so much. And thank you, of course, for listening. If you're out there and you're interested in an internship opportunity with CMBA, or if you're looking for a full time position, maybe you're already done with school and you've got your architecture or similar education already completed, we also have full time opportunity applications available on our website.
Skyler: It's cmbaarchitects. com. You can check us out there. Um, like I said, fill in one of those applications, send it on in, and we'll try to get in touch with you. Um, additionally, if you'd like to learn a little bit more about CMBA, you can check us out on social media. We're on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Skyler: And of course, make sure to follow, subscribe this podcast, laying the foundation, which you can find on Spotify, iTunes, Google podcasts, and everywhere else that podcasts can be streamed. So thank you again for listening. My name is Skylar. I'm the host, and this has been another episode of laying the foundation.
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November 14, 2024