You need to follow your passion. If you like Surveying stay in it. You must be doing something right to be one of the last left at your company. If getting a License is important you can look at neighboring states. Maybe relocating where less education required for licensing is an option. Your company might benefit from having a license in a near by state also.
There is another thread going on in education/training you may want to look at. It seems to go with this one as well. "Four Year Degree -In Referance to elginduley post"
Hope you make the right choice for you and your family.
Mark
Something easy?
>I wouldn't be happy with something that isn't easy. I want to know that I have actually accomplished something when I get old at say 60 something and look back.
If you stick with something "easy", when you look back in 30 years, you won't think you've accomplished much.
> Ok... I've reached a point of cusp: Do I stay in surveying or leave entirely? Reason I ask is this: I have an opportunity to go back to school.
By opportunity do you mean somebody is going to pay for it?
>I can choose a completely different field of study ... or, with difficulty, take courses that Florida will accept so that I can provide a piece of paper saying I went to college and then take a test.
Forget Surveying unless that 'somebody' is a Surveyor...if not, ask the person paying for your education 'what I need to be when I grow up'
>I have been doing surveying for 15 years now. 5 in Alabama and the remainder here.
What the hell is 'doing'? Have you been under the direction of a Professional Land Surveyor?
>I have come back on surveyors that should have long ago had their licenses revoked and yet they continue to practice while I sit here unable to obtain a 4 year degree just so I can wait two more years to take a test and so on...
'Come back'??? How do you know they should have had their licenses revoked? What makes you 'sit' there?...What makes you 'unable' to obtain a 4 year degree?...and only two years with your 'mentor' makes you something?...and so on...
>I understand the theory behind requiring a 4 year degree. I have learned not to respect or trust it.
I don't care if you trust or respect...if it is the rule, do it...(I don't have a degree.)
>I have the last position available in my town doing land surveying. All the other companies have gone back into the bush and almost everyone at my company has been laid off. I've been lucky.
The 'last' position 'doing' land surveying? Has your PLS in your office (you Mentor) been laid off too?...If so, you are 'lucky' that you have not been called 'un-licensed' surveying'.
>I can keep going but I feel stumped because I do not have my license. So I can either change or deal?
Ask your 'Mentor'...you know...the one who is stamping your 'doings'...
>Btw, I'm 35 so I figure I got a lot of life left.
Btw...I was a wore out 30 before my Mentor thought I was ready to even take the test. I was 'lucky' that the board thought so much of my Mentor to let me sit for the test...
DDSM
AR1056 (1985) with ICS degree
I would add that there are a lot of college graduates in many fields looking for a job right now, and many working at minimum wage jobs.
One thing that helps me is to always keep a side hobby or job going. I have been buying and selling music gear lately. You can always start a part time career or go to school while you are surveying.
Something easy?
> >I wouldn't be happy with something that isn't easy. I want to know that I have actually accomplished something when I get old at say 60 something and look back.
>
> If you stick with something "easy", when you look back in 30 years, you won't think you've accomplished much.
Based on the sentiment of the second sentence, I think the first has a typo in it.
Something easy?
I hope so.
> I would add that there are a lot of college graduates in many fields looking for a job right now, and many working at minimum wage jobs.
>
> One thing that helps me is to always keep a side hobby or job going. I have been buying and selling music gear lately. You can always start a part time career or go to school while you are surveying.
Sam makes two important points here. Hardly anything has to always be 'all or nothing'. Goodness knows I've made money doing other things besides practicing surveying since I've had my 'ticket'. Especially these last 4 years or so.
Probably going to be more and more of "that's the way of the world" in the future.
I feel sorry for the people that hate their job. I can't imagine what it's like, waking up every morning saying, "Man this sucks, but I need a paycheck...."
Try not to be so negative, find the silver lining and run with it. Don't look back, unless that's the direction you want to go.
Cheers,
Radar
To stay or go... <<>>
Ed,
You are the voice of reason & logic.
Not only on this topic/thread but many other too.
You remind me of my father, who always had a way of seeing logic through all the fog.
-- As strange as it is, I have been wondering myself these last few years, and more so, these last few months if this field is really for me.
I'm addicted I think. -- I take on projects and lose money.
Case in point- Phone rings and a perspective client says he needs his corners & lines marked. I ask a few questions, do some research -and- then I start thinking, "boy, I'd like to have this job" & "Oh man, I haven't been in that area in years, it would be fun" -or- "I need a new project & I can't let this fish off the hook" --
So, I prepare a proposal and send it - Probably at 1/2 what it really should be.
It's like I am addicted.
I do it all the time & I know better.
I can't help myself.
The fact & reality is,
I know that most of the surveyor's out there do the same thing.
We may be good land surveyors
But, we are poor business people.
6th..
I feel it, too.
But where else could I find a job that lets me run up and down the road all day long like a twenty year old? I get to dig up who knows what (in the middle of the road, no less!) and charge people money for hoppin' their fences and walking through their woods.
I agree, I'm not a very good business man. But it's a living. I manage to keep the bills paid, fatten up the IRA every year and keep some pretty neat equipment around.
Somebody has to do it, it might as well be someone like me that loves it.
6th..
I love Surveying. It can be a pain sometimes. I've unemployed last few weeks, looks like I may be working soon. The local workforce office is offering to send me back to school. Their feeling is Land Surveying is a dying profession. I'm thinking of doing a few credits a month in computer networking, but making sure I have time for full time work. Classes will be offered online, any time I choose to do them. Computer networking skills could be used in a survey office. Can't count how many hours were wasted when the network crashed, or my PC went down.
I'm going to keep riding this dead horse, until our economy recovers.
6th..
In the 1930's times were a lot worse than now. Kids of the time had the choice of complaining that there was no work or working for the CCC or going to the state university for free or for $30 per term. Those that did were officers in the War of the Greatest Generation and the leaders in the 1950's and 60's and 70's.
Things eventually recover, always. This is a great time to further your education if unemployed or under-employed. You will never regret it.
Long term, surveying will always be around. Here in my state of ten million people we cannot seem to get more than two or three dozen new surveyors registered in a year. That falls far short of the deaths and retirements of us in the baby boom generation. The math is unanswerable.
Carl, Ummmm.....
> .... Here in my state of ten million people we cannot seem to get more than two or three dozen new surveyors registered in a year. That falls far short of the deaths and retirements of us in the baby boom generation....
Makes you wonder exactly why that is the case, eh? And does Ohio require the degree, btw? I have no idea how those numbers compare to Georgia, either.
6th..
Carl,
Very true - Good point & great insight
Attrition - Coupled with basic economic supply & demand theory, would in fact seem to have a valid basis for a viable service.
But, how long does one wait?
When the repo truck takes your chariot?
or until your 401-k runs out?
Or when you lose your house?
The bank roll to support this hobby is running thin.
Only if I can just make it through another winter...
(I've heard that one before)
-- The lost decade --
-- The race to the bottom --
Oh - Woe is me...
No, I don't wonder.
Ohio has required a degree in surveying for decades.
And no, I don't wonder about the current situation at all. I have been through enough boom and bust cycles to understand it. That's why I have never done mortgage surveys or land development work, except on my own property, and Uncle Charlie's. This is the worst one that I have ever seen and of course it affects most people, not just surveyors. It affects those recent graduates, who thought they were doing the right thing in getting an education, the most.
The problem here in Ohio for surveying education has been the spotty performance of the educational system over those decades and not anything else. With the increase in requirements for four year degrees, and the limited residential opportunities nationwide, it is time to modernize the approach and expand distance learning opportunities for the profession. The best institutions performing that task will rise to the top. I'd do whatever I could to help that happen.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it!
No, I don't wonder.
> Ohio has required a degree in surveying for decades.
>
> And no, I don't wonder about the current situation at all. I have been through enough boom and bust cycles to understand it. That's why I have never done mortgage surveys or land development work, except on my own property, and Uncle Charlie's. This is the worst one that I have ever seen and of course it affects most people, not just surveyors. It affects those recent graduates, who thought they were doing the right thing in getting an education, the most.
>
> The problem here in Ohio for surveying education has been the spotty performance of the educational system over those decades and not anything else. With the increase in requirements for four year degrees, and the limited residential opportunities nationwide, it is time to modernize the approach and expand distance learning opportunities for the profession. The best institutions performing that task will rise to the top. I'd do whatever I could to help that happen.
>
> That's my story and I'm sticking to it!
🙂 Well, I'm certainly not going to question your story!
Though Georgia has never required a degree, they certainly have educational requirements in surveying related subjects. ICS served that purpose for myself and the state. I agree with you about the need for more flexibility for those seeking degrees that will satisfy state requirements. As to the boom/bust cycles, I've lived through four of them myself. Didn't matter at those times what area of surveying I was working in. There were good times and there were bad times. IMO, these 'bad times' aren't ever gonna end for boundary surveyors. And, after all, if there is little to no need for boundary surveyors, what is the point of a young person jumping through the hoops for being licensed? What need does the state have erecting those hoops? Joe Blow can survey a route for a pipeline or lay out a bridge with some training, the right equipment and enough moxie/liability insurance. I just don't see how any young man or woman could, considering what the eventual 'rewards' would probably be, ever consider a career that leads to a license for which there was little demand. These factors are what I believe lead to fewer and fewer people being licensed as land surveyors. Not to mention that many who would have been clients in the past can now go on line and get a 'survey' down loaded from their local GIS site, and you CANNOT convince them they didn't download a 'survey' because.....wait for it..................
they got it from a GOVERNMENT funded site.
NO, really.
6th..
>> Things eventually recover, always.
History opines that is not necessarily true.
Something easy?
those double-negatives don't not get you every time.;-)
6th..
> >> Things eventually recover, always.
>
> History opines that is not necessarily true.
Why do I envision a guy setting up a store outside the ruins of a Mayan temple deep in the Mexican jungle thinking to himself "They'll be back any day now"
6th..
IF he's selling calenders he's probably doing better than most of us.:-|
