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extra mile to preserve the mount stones and treat them like a Today, the place that most young professionals are hanging out
piece of history. is online - and this was true even before the onset of the global
pandemic.
For Zach, moments like watching that surveyor in action made
the classroom experience and the field experience start to Case in point: Zach reached out to Kent about mentorship
harmonize in a really nice way. opportunities on Facebook.
As valuable as mentor-mentee relationships are, they can be Meanwhile, Farrah gets hundreds of likes on her surveying-
hard to come by. inspired Instagram account, @lady_land_surveyoraz.
One reason is that most experienced surveyors are so busy with Adam agreed that social media is a natural area to focus on when
their actual jobs that it’s hard to find time to give away to the it comes to both education and outreach.
younger generation.
“I think social media right now is the best way. I mean, I’m telling
But “mentoring” doesn’t always have to mean formal, time- you, I did a lot of research. Since I am paying for school out of
intensive teaching. pocket, I had to do a lot of research before I made the decision
to go into surveying. And I’m telling you, I didn’t find a lot of info,”
Farrah recalls that when her father started his career, his boss said Adam.
would stick around for an extra hour at the end of most days and
let him watch and learn one-on-one. It’s wasn’t formal teaching, Farrah suspects there may be an unconscious battle going on
but it was still valuable. between educational content that’s deemed acceptable - such as
in the classroom, and content that’s not, such as social media.
“You have to find the right person that is willing to really invest
the time. And on the days where they don’t have as much time, “I think there is a little group of people that have tried to create
to at least be willing to let you kind of hover and watch. And then content that is survey related, but I feel like it all kind of funnels
maybe on the drive back, explain why they had to do what they back into this idea of education,” she said.
did,” Farrah said.
“For instance, a company reached out to me and was like, hey,
Another growing issue is the increasing trend of one-person what do you think about doing a couple of video courses on sort Members have spoken and we are listening! To fill the void left by the
field crews. When you’re the only person on the job, it quickly of the fundamentals, or how you begin being a surveyor? And
becomes impossible to train the next generation side-by-side. so I put this up on my LinkedIn, and you can go and read the ending this past July of the NSPS Radio Hour, the weekly radio show
comments, and there was a good mix. But a lot of what I get hosted by Executive Director Curt Sumner, we are proud to announce
Zach recently took his growing desire for a mentor into his own and messages and comments is, well, you know, basically how our new podcast, “SURVEYOR SAYS!” featuring all things surveying.
hands and reached out to Kent Groh on Facebook regarding a assertive are you going to be?”
mentorship opportunity. They ended up meeting up for beers to
kick off the conversation. Comments were along the lines of: “you can’t just teach people
how to survey!” or “How dare you to think that you could create a
video giving somebody the basics or the fundamentals!”
Ultimately, if you rely on hands-on experience to solidify your
survey skills, that experience is only as valuable as the mentor In a way, it’s the mindset of an older generation. Across many
that is helping you along the way. professions, there used to be an aura of secrecy, with the instinct
that company information and practices should be kept internal
Embrace the digital community versus sharing them with the broader community.

But across industries, that’s changing.
“Sometimes we do ourselves such a disservice by making it
sound like it’s some very deep and mystical thing that we do. And
we have a magic walking stick that we carry around, and nobody
else can possibly know how to do it without, you know, all these
things being in place first. So we kind of shoot ourselves in the
foot that way,” Farrah said.

In the end, the more walls that come down and the more content
that is circulated, the better.

That content doesn’t have to be solely online on a social media
page or podcast. And it doesn’t have to be exclusively offline
It’s clear that time and resources are limited when it comes to between student and teacher or mentor and mentee.
meeting, educating, and mentoring young surveyors.
Education is powerful in all forms. And the more resources
That’s why it’s perhaps more critical than ever to meet those there are to learn about surveying, the better off the surveying
young or prospective surveyors where they are. professional will be.

https://surveyorsays.podbean.com/
40 The Nevada Traverse Vol.48, No.2, 2021