Joseph Ellis First 5 Weeks Recap

 My internship is in the panhandle of Florida with MC Wolf consultants. It is a small practice that is run solely by my boss Michael Wolf. He does landscape design and some civil work, and does a wide variety of different projects ranging from small residential projects to larger commercial projects. It has been awesome working alongside him because I get to learn first hand how the business works, and how projects get done start to finish. Being here in the panhandle is great too because there is a ton of work and loads of new development happening everywhere. Because of this we are working on a ton of projects all at the same time. In the short few weeks I have been here, I have worked on multiple different projects already. I have done renderings for a mausoleum, designed and rendered a koi pond for a residential courtyard, and am currently working by myself on doing a masterplan for a 150 acre retirement community. Those three are just the ones I have done substantial work on, on top of that I have gotten to look at and learn about a bunch of other projects. For example we're working on a smaller community center, the full landscape plan for a new Costco, and a new development with 5 acre ranch style lots that is incorporating a vineyard permacultures throughout the site. I have also been able to go on a solo site visit to the retirement community that I am working on. The name of the community is Westminster and it is located in Daphne, Alabama. The residents range from people in assisted living to people living independently in duplex "cottages." I got to tour the site with the property manager and independently photograph and survey the whole property. Also outside of the office I just went and did an inspection for DOT, to observe and write a report on any damage from the most recent snow that happened here a few weeks ago. I had to walk around and photograph a little over a mile stretch of planted medians and beds along the highway. 

When I first got here Mike had office space with some architects in Pensacola which was over an hour and a half drive from where I lived and over an hour for him. I would drive to his house in the morning and then we would drive together to Pensacola. It wasn't to bad because if I had work that I could do by myself for a day I could work from home, so I basically worked from home in every other day. However during that time Mike was looking for an office closer to his home in Freeport, which he had just recently moved into, so I was able to see the whole process of finding new office space. We called different engineering and architectural firms in the area and took one day to drive around and go talk to places in person. We ended up getting some office space at a civil engineering firm that also has two independent architects in their upstairs portion of the office. This worked out extremely well for me because the office is now only a 5 minute drive away from where I live. 

I was fortunate enough to have relatives that live in the area so I am able to stay with them and not pay rent while I am here. I currently live with my cousins David and Stacey in the new WaterSound development and am about 5 minutes away from the beach in Watercolor. The neighborhood I am staying in, as well as the other communities along 30A have beautiful landscaping that I am able to observe and study everyday. Florida is very interesting also because they have strict laws around water runoff, so developments and properties are required to have retention or detention areas. The area overall is very good to study landscape architecture practices and see how high quality developments are landscaped and managed.

Outside of work I have been going to the gym everyday and golfing as much as I can. I also got to experience the first snow this area of Florida has had in over 50 years which was really cool. In the neighborhood I have access to a free gym and a free 10 hole par 3 golf course that is great for practice. In addition, there are tons of very nice golf courses all around me from Panama city to Sandestin. I have been trying to play a new course every weekend and I have been enjoying the quality of courses a lot. So far I have played 4 different courses, and the last two weekends I have played courses in Sandestin. There are 3 total courses in the Sandestin area and I am playing the third and final one named The Raven this coming weekend. The gym has been going well for me too and I have already put on 8 pounds since I got here on the 20th of January. This has required me to change my diet a lot. My life basically revolves around me consuming as much food as I can stomach at every meal of the day. I have been eating rice and chicken breast every single night, and I finally got tired of it and got some mass gainer power to switch it up. It is nice to have something different but drinking 1300 calories of powder and milk in one sitting makes me feel like my stomach is going to explode. Overall though starting to workout has been great for me and I have a lot more energy throughout the day.

The internship as a whole has been extremely beneficial already and I have learned a lot in a very short amount of time. Mike does all of his work in AutoCAD so I have been learning a ton of new stuff about the program. He only does cad work because he is constantly pumping out designs and in the past if any renderings have needed to be done he has had to pay other people to do them. With me working for him now I am able to help a lot with illustrates which saves him a lot of time and money. This has allowed me to sharpen my rendering skills while also learning a lot of cad along with it. This whole week and the end of last week I have been solely working in cad on the Westminster master plan. I have been designing new community gathering areas, a handicap accessible community garden, a new walking trail, and creating a new planting plan for the whole site. Hopefully I will finish this massive project by the next update and be working on something else. 

These are some photos from my site visit to Westminster retirement community

This is the street that I live on and a photo of my cousins house that I am staying in

This is a rendering of our landscape design for a mausoleum (We talked with the client on the phone for a while and the design and render have changed since this picture was taken) 

This is the neighborhood course that I get to play for free

This photo was taken at The Links at Sandestin

This is at a course named Bay Point which is a Jack Nicklaus designed course. This hole had an island fairway in the middle of a bay marsh (I'm not sure if the video will work or not)

This is a photo taken in the gym parking lot when it snowed (we got 5-6 inches but I still managed to make it to the gym)

This is me and my boss Michael Wolf (Mike) at our old Pensacola office

This is me taking photos on our DOT inspection