Charting a Career That Allows Working Outside of an Office

[blaughli]

Hi,

When considering a long term career, how does one chart a course that will allow working outside of an office for a substantial amount of the week/month/year/life? A very general, open question, but as I interview and gain experience with more and more engineering firms I realize that everyone is at the computer for 50 weeks out of the year. God bless the engineers, but I need to surf! Maybe medicine is the answer...

 

[ZapperZ]

Change career and be a park ranger.

Zz.

 

[Timo]

Surfing as a park ranger? I dunno.

 

[Mike H]

I doubt that all that time spent in the hospital during med school/internship/residency - to say nothing of the on-call responsibilities - will help you to maximize your time spent surfing. Not to mention the student debt you'll almost certainly rack up.

Have you looked into oceanography/marine sciences/geosciences in general? If that's still too much time indoors for your taste (you still need to analyze data, write papers, and all that), I'm pretty sure professional lifeguard is always an option. Seriously. I know a few people who left behind science - even some with a Ph.D. - to do something that more closely aligned with how they preferred to spend their free time/in line with their hobbies.

 

[turbo]

Entymology, forestry, wildlife management...

 

[turbo]

BTW, if you Google Unity College, you will find a curriculum that might interest you. There is another school in Maine -College of the Atlantic - that might interest you.

 

[NeoZeon]

Earth Science field work.

 

[Monocles]

Mathematics maybe? The math professor I worked for this past summer had an 'outside office' that she worked at every day.

 

[lisab]

Surveyor.

 

[Clever-Name]

Be a surfing teacher at a beach.

 

[turbo]

Surveyor.

My surveying instructor in college was a crusty old fart. His hobby was collecting old bottles, so whenever he was surveying old farm-steads, etc, he'd keep his eyes peeled for likely dumps, privies, etc and excavate them while his helper(s) broke for lunch. An old family friend who was our region's game warden used to to that as well. The best places seemed to be old hill-side farms with good run-off, and that's what we have here a-plenty.

 

[blaughli]

I appreciate everyone's input. While I'm not yet ready to throw in the towel completely and become a park ranger or lifeguard, I have been looking into oceanography and I'm pretty excited about the possibilities there. A friend at Scripps told me that engineers are in high demand in most ocean-science facilities, although I do imagine that the competition for these jobs is pretty fierce. At this point I am deciding between doing ME or EE or something in between, which would give me skills needed in many areas including oceanography, or just doing some sort of computer engineering/ computer science track, which might risk my soul but would pay for quick trips to mexico.