What's your Major?

Ben Beard wrote:geotechnical engineering or geological engineering, from an ABET accredited college. geological engineering- lots of jobs in water, environmental, oil/gas, mining, and construction. geotechnical- civil jobs, mining, etc. more job locations than straight geo eng. I would highly recommend going geological engineering vs. geology. loads of unemployed geos out there. Geos really need a masters degree to get somewhere (typically, not always). Job market tends to swing up and down pretty hard on geos more so than geo/geotech engineers. Why I did it? I get to spend all day breaking rocks, monitoring rocks, design around rocks, building 3D models of actual rocks, finite element models of rocks, and more. Then I get to go home and climb on them.

Hmmm, I would make a bit of a caveat to this. Geotechnical Engineers do a great deal of water, environmental, and construction work too ;) I, a Geotechnical Engineer have designed several landfills, water drainage analyzes, and have done a great deal of CMT work.

I would say that the main difference between a geotechnical engineer and a geological engineer is that geotechs tend to focus on soils and geological engineers tend to focus on rock.... Tend to focus is the keyword. I've done more rock coring and analysis than I can count.

The main thing that a geotech fails at is rock identification for mining and gas exploration. With that said, I could probably be trained up on the topic in just a few weeks with my other knowledge. Geological engineers also tend to focus on things like rock stability for open pit mining and retaining walls.

Again however, both fields are fairly interchangeable with a limited amount of training, heh.

JLP wrote:That said, I think clothing, pack, shoe, etc. designers are generally non technical people - artists, basically. I know some good ones, but several are out of work now and have recently switched careers. It's a rare job. The best do well, but there are only a few out there. BTW - getting advice on a major from a college is the absolute worst mistake you could make. Their job is to sell you into a program so their [possibly worthless] existance can be justified - not to make you employable. I see this mistake made a lot. The world moves a lot faster today than college departments can change - or die off.

Gortex did a recruiting tour at my college.

I will have to disagree with you about the education thing. What college does not teach you is how to do the actual engineering itself. What it does teach you is how to think like an engineer and give you the tools you will need to tackle a large variety of problems.

Joe Ludlow wrote: Not really though. Typically engineers are required to write massive amounts of reports, heh.

It was mostly tongue in cheek; however, as I've spent the last 6 years of my career reviewing said engineering reports, in my experience the statement holds true.

Joe Ludlow wrote: What college does not teach you is how to do the actual engineering itself. What it does teach you is how to think like an engineer and give you the tools you will need to tackle a large variety of problems.

+1

Joe, you are correct.

I forgot to add another bonus, I get to lick rocks.

Does gypsum count as a rock?

just barely. industrial minerals are iffy

Even when they are found in their insitu environment?

12m gypsum, bolt it or trad?