Montage of madness is the only way to describe my current events...
Ben was hit hard by a plague/cold/kiss of death last week, which inevitably decided to take turns with me this week. Not the best of timing, as I had some hardcore job interviews lined up. Should've expected that though. Doesn't it seem only like my classic good-luck that I would come down with this plague right when I resume my ever-eventful search for that next post-grad step? Naturally.
Anyways, I (definitely) know I'm better off then some in this economy. Having said that, I definitely won't resort to whining about my current career prospects (especially since I do currently have a steady, if not well-paying, gig...with the much needed at the moment health-insurance) . However, I must admit it's hard to sum up where I feel like I fit in (career-wise) at this point. I hold a Master's in Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, but my interests and training go very beyond the job offerings of those fields. So, honestly, as I sit here punching away at my C.V. trying to define and redefine that "career objective", the next step is very unclear and ambiguous to me.
I think, the heart of my problem here is what I studied and how I studied it. To be specific, I spent a healthy bulk of my time in grad school learning and perfecting my remote sensing skills. I liked what I learned about the field, and definitely would like to carry it over to industry if I could (where I could learn more without going further into grad debt). However, unfortunately, most of the remote sensing positions I'm interested in are more leaning more towards candidates with hard-core programming experience (we are talking the C++ hard core coder engineers). This appears to be true even if they don't mention it in their recruiting ads. For example: a very interesting SF carbon start-up called
Terra Global, seemed by their
job description to fit me very well (
ENVI experience? Check. Supervised and unsupervised land classification? Check Check. Biomass inventory and forestry work? CHECK!!!). In fact, I actually got a call back for an interview (EXCITEMENT!!)....but unfortunately, they hired someone before my interview turn came around (bummer.). I sent my usual "I understand, please keep me informed of opportunities, and P.S. how could I improve to meet
your needs(?)", and got a very polite letter from the managing director explaining that though I definitely had a strong developing remote sensing skill set, I still lacked the hard languages background and programming experience he thought were necessary (also, he added, "was I interested in consulting offers(?)").
And so the story goes....
I'd definitely be lying if I didn't say that I felt like my minimal programming experience was a weakness of mine, and a hinderance in getting into the hard core remote sensing stuff. Both my geography and (definitely) my environmental planning background did not place any sort of emphasis on programming talents. What I do know are mostly sub-languages like
SQL and Visual Basic, (which are more handy for heavily-
GUI'd packages like
ESRI GIS and Microsoft Access)...and those skills I mostly picked up from doing database work.
Problem with remote sensing is that it is a very hard skill set to develop outside of very elite academic institutions. The software is very cost prohibited (
Definiens licenses can run 7500-10,000) .
ENVI isn't much better (4,000-6,000). Even with educational discounts, many institutions just find it too darn expensive to provide for their students. Also, there is the instructor problem. The few professors with the professional aptitude and intellectual interest for teaching remote sensing (i.e. which, I find, requires an unusual combo of atmospheric physics,
geostatistics, computer science, and
geospatial training) rarely, if ever, have the technical programming aspects down. That particular widget of info is delegated to either a T.A. (recruited, most likely, from a department outside of Geography and Planning... usually in the electrical engineering/computer science ranks)...or just ignored all together. As a result, many remote sensing classes are more entrenched in teaching the "statisticals and the theoreticals" of the field, rather then practicing with the latest software and learning the necessary computational techniques (as I personally found to be the case with my
earliest remote sensing classes at Berkeley...which is why I started taking classes at Davis later in the game).
At the end of the day, I think my only option for really boosting my resume to offer the remote sensing skills that company's (like
Terra Global) require is going back to grad school. Not just any grad school either, but an "elite" program, like
UCSB Geography or
UC Davis. I can't say the prospect of doing that really thrills me at the moment...especially since I'm so exhausted after jumping through the hoops at my last program. However, in my (at this point, very real,) feverish delirium of where my career is pointing me, I am becoming very aware of something I wasn't aware of before I applied for that legendary master's of landscape architecture and environmental planning.
This summer, while en-route to new career paths, I've been taking the time to talk to some like-minded undergrads who want to transition their theoretical geographical background into a landscape architecture or environmental planning career. This of course makes sense for them to do, since the program that I just jumped hoops through was a Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning program (and ranked #2 or #3 last time I heard), and well...it (*seems) like I'm actually currently employed in it (I say 'seems' because I think my actual workload has transcended the limits of the typical architecture & planning education several times).
I've got to admit, just by looking for jobs, you begin to realize that Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning are very broad (and sometimes, very separate) fields. There are also many career paths in them. However, one common theme I'm struck by (as I am busy scouting the job market and advising new recruits) is how many environmental planning and landscape management firms are really starting to thinking about the "big" picture. The scale and the scope of the assignments out there have grown. People are not turning to landscape architects and environmental planners to ask how to best plant their garden, or manage their local creek. They are now turning to landscape architects and environmental planners to ask how to stop global warming, or fix the multitude of ailments of entire watersheds.
I feel like my graduate program openly embraced these large scale questions, but did not have many classes addressing what tools are necessary and how to work at such a comprehensive and holistic scale.
GIS, CAD and hand drawing were the typical 'tools-of-trade' taught in my program. Remote sensing was entirely ignored by the students and the professors...and anyone interested in it (like me) had to go far outside of the department to find the training and resources. CAD and hand-drawings, only really useful for fine-scale design rather then large scale analysis, left
GIS as the only pathway for understanding these large scale questions. Frankly, I think that's a bad thing.
GIS data is progressively moving further away from being files captured by ground-based instruments (i.e. GPS, weather/water
gauges, etc) and more closely to being files generated by large-scale models and from high-resolution imagery. This is not to say that there isn't a place or use for ground-based data (definitely, it is necessary to have it to be capable of validating accuracy in all image and model dependent data), it's just to say that more and more the vector and raster layers we use in
GIS are somehow tied to a science that most landscape architects and environmental planners have no training or familiarity with.
GIS, for all it's merits, can be an exceptionally dangerous thing in the hands of the ill-informed. With the plethora of (mostly free) data out there, it's all too easy to add a bunch of data layers and make pretty maps of large scale phenomenon that really have no basis in logic or reality. With the multitude of pressures my
colleagues face (from development deadlines, to permitting applications, to the competitive bid processes), I see too much of this "pretty map making" and very little logical thought process
behind the "map making". The emphasis almost always seems to be placed on making the map look "good" as oppose to making it make sense.
A wise-teacher once told me that the methodology of properly adding, modifying, and modeling
GIS layers is intrinsically dependent on how the information was gathered, by what source, and for what purpose. Since much of this large-scale
GIS information is now coming to 'us' (i.e. landscape architects and environmental planners) via satellite feed and computer simulations, it's important for us to be able to interpret how these remote process work and what laws they obey. You simply
can't learn that by blithely adding
GIS output data layers at your whimsy till they assemble the pretty patterns of your mind. It's just utter ignorance to do such, and raging stupidity to present such information under the
deceiving visual guise of a "fact-based" map.
I can definitely respect
landscape architects and environmental planners for the scale and scope of their vision....but unless their information comes to me in the form of a clear, methods based, map product...I have little hope that
their information will actually accomplish large-scale change or actually answer the large-scale issues they endeavor to address.
So, to all the new landscape and planning recruits with big-
lollipop dreams of solving the next global crisis, I find I'm leaving them with this advice (advice, that I dearly hope all the wall street investors are taking into account these days): diversify yourself. Take the time outside your program to learn the source and makings of your data. Venture out of that
GIS box, and meet up with the raw source, data, and code. Yeah, it's tricky...and it sure isn't what they are advising you to do right now in your program, but trust me, it will make you think better. Even with 3 years of remote sensing training under my belt, I truly believe I understand the logic (and deception) of
geospatial maps better then ever before. As a result I also believe I understand the large-scale issues and their influences better then before.
Of course, there is a lot for even me to still learn (which takes us back to the top). Ideally, I'd hope to learn this on the job, but realistically, it might not be possible without further education. However, at the moment, I'm going to keep plodding (or wandering...depending on which day of the week it is) on this subject...because someday, I believe, my ability to know the source of the problem will enable me to make a earnest attempt in solving it.
::steps off
puplit and heads to the sneezing room for more
sudafed:::
