If you're looking for an adventure, an intellectual challenge, and a close-knit community of professionals, consider land surveying! It's not for everyone, and I'd recommend working as a surveyor's assistant or office staff before committing to the necessary schooling.

I think that people can get caught up in the "gee-whiz" technology of surveying, which is constantly changing, and forget about the legal aspects and the professional responsibility that surveyors bear - something that hasn't changed much at all in hundreds of years.

If you're looking for an adventure, an intellectual challenge, and a close-knit community of professionals, consider land surveying! It's not for everyone, and I'd recommend working as a surveyor's assistant or office staff before committing to the necessary schooling.

There's a popular misconception that property boundaries are based on coordinates that surveyors can simply "walk to" with our instruments. The reality is that, while physical coordination of monuments is easier than it's ever been, property boundaries often need to be determined based on evidence and plans that are old, decrepit, and done with different technology and expectations than we have today.

I liked the idea of working outside, using my body and my mind together. I haven't been disappointed! Land surveying can be very physical work, but there is a strong intellectual and technological component as well.

People sometimes are under the impression that finding their property corners should cost as much as changing their oil or blowing out their sprinklers. What they don't realize is that land surveyors are required to stand behind their work for the rest of their lives.

Land surveyors start as employees, and move up to partnership in a firm or to ownership of their own enterprise if they wish. Some wind up working for government, private corporations, or public enterprise.