You're what?

'Hello' say I, shaking hands whilst trying not to spill wine down them. 'I'm Alice.' 'Hi - I'm John. What do you do for a living?' 'I'm an architect' say I. Various responses to this, with translations below:

1. 'Wow! Really? I didn't realise!'

(Doesn't look like an architect - where are the black clothes, cropped hair and silly glasses?)

2. Oh. I see.

(thinks 'I bet they did that awful estate at the end of our road. Hundreds of them. Just look at the extra traffic. I bet they live in a really nice house out in the country')

3. Oh, yes, I think I've heard of you

(no idea who she is, but architects are really sensitive if you don't know who they are, arn't they? Did she do that horrible glass thing in the city centre? Oh, there's someone I know - I'd better get out of this quick)

4. That must be really interesting - do you work locally?

(probably did the drawings for the extension our neighbours had - it was awful and I don't know how they got planning permission. Even our neighbour doesn't like it much and said the architect didn't listen)

5. Oh - my son/daughter/ neighbour / friend is an architect.

(They did the plans for our extension. The other architects we approached were really expensive. Ours was half the price. Though the building costs were a lot more than expected...)

I wonder, from the non architect perspective - does anyone really know what an architect does? Or is?