Surveying

I've been in the office all week so far...OK, it's raining anyway! (again)  I think I'd still rather be outside, finding stuff, lost treasure, boundary corners not recovered in 100 years. I love taking a pile of deeds, some old plans, USGS maps, Tax maps and any other stuff I can find and piecing it all together...solving the mystery of where a line or corner should be. The best is when, after coming up with a good hypothesis of where these pins or fences or stones or old trees should be...I spend a day outside and find all (or most) of the stuff. Then we do our field survey and measurements and confirm what I thought and draw up a plan to record it. Where else can you work and get paid to go on treasure hunts, and then use that info to help people, and then record what you did in a place intended to preserve your work for posterity.

I think I'm a pretty good surveyor, I love surveying, and I know I figure stuff out that goes past others, sometimes. There is still so much left to learn...so much law, so much theory, etc. I guess it's another reason that surveying is fun....there's no break in learning...EVER. I don't think you can ever know it all....the licence is "giving the right to practice surveying"  and I'm practicing all the time...I know practice wont ever make perfect, though.

It would be cool to be old someday and be looked upon as one of the THOSE surveyor's, the guy everybody goes to and still calls with questions...the one whose plans everybody regards as gospel. The one who future surveyors would like to emulate.

Then there is being a manager and running a surveying business. I know I'm probably a horrible manager...for me, it's a good thing that the team that I have working for me are sooooo good, very autonomous and also very devoted to doing a good job. They make me look good! Of course, not being a very good manager is probably half because I really don't like being a manager or boss...although in reality...everything I ever do, I end up in that kind of position. I guess probably it's also true that I would rather work for myself than for someone else. 

SVE gives the best of both worlds in that regard. Yes, we have an owner of the company and vice presidents, etc, but as far as running the survey department....I'm left to my own devices. Autonomy with a big brother who has your back. I think my best strength is that I can get people to rally around me, people who are very good or better than me at doing what I need to get done,  and I can get them to do it.

Of course I'm feeling high right now because we just sat down and got a real good handle on a pretty tricky boundary problem...up till this morning the direction was kind of loose....I'm pretty sure now that I know what I HOPE to or WANT to find. Will we find it? I'm pretty confident that we will...or if we don't ...no one else can either. (fingers crossed)