Ideal Profession…
Well this is a difficult question. I think if I really knew I would have been doing that job years ago. For me, I originally went into chemical engineering because I enjoyed the types of problems I was presented and over time I used more and more technology. It’s quite amazing to me when I think about how I went from a rural area with little internet and computer needs to programming Distributed Control Systems.
Overall, I wanted to do something a bit different than working in chemical facilities. I did have strong opinions about how people are trained in technical areas and thought I could go into education technology to improve post-secondary and professional development experiences. I realized pretty quickly that there are not many applications of technology really being used in education that improves the experience and most education providers don’t invest much money in development of new revolutionary tools. If I wanted to do that then it is better to just develop technology in my free time and eventually create a company because its a tough industry and most companies want to generate revenue with the least amount of risk. I continue to think about this topic. It was probably my driving reason for working for a education technology company and their bootcamps.
So where am I now on this subject? I’m pretty open to most industries. I can not say I have a specific field that is ideal. I probably lean toward geospacial analysis because it is just a topic that seems to provide so many interesting answers and generates interesting questions - it’s almost like its a subject that is never brought up by anyone. I also seem to enjoy data extraction and cleaning much more than most people. It makes me feel a bit odd - it’s also a subject that many don’t like but I find it natural to explore data and try to find that bit that has been overlooked and then see what changes when models are run on that data. I think this must be a habit from working with chemical process data that was so messy that when you finally found that trend that explained why things work the way they do and you can generate extra margin from it - that was a great feeling.
