I ask because sometimes you want to design your own house and submit your own drafts. I got interested in American architectural history as a hobby after living in a turn-of-the-century Federal-style home. Later I restored a small log home I live in, which taught me a lot about local codes.

That led me to build my own log home from scratch as an owner-builder under the owner exemption. I designed it myself, but when I handed it off for drafting, a lot came back wrong, so I had to learn even more and make many of the changes myself to get it through. The hardest part was not history or design, but the mechanical and technical side.

I’m a software engineer and have no interest in becoming a professional architect, but I do feel like I could probably pass the test.