(Entry) level careers in geography?

Question

Im thinking of switching my major to this.

When you decided to major in geography, what made You want to major in geography (or a similar field) and what were your career goals at the time? What do you do as a job/career now?

Thanks for the insight!

Answer 1

I've always been fascinated with maps. So, right out of high school I joined the Army with a guarantee to be trained as a Cartographer. The training was very thorough-at teh Dept. of Defense Mapping School at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia. From there I went on to make maps at Ft. Hood, TX and Ft. Shafter, Hawaii.

After the military, I went to work for a surveyor/forester. I did mapping an dlearned to do field cadastral and construction surveying work. I attended night school (college)-eventually changed my major to engineering-since I'd taken all the geography courses the junior college had to offer. I amassed a lot of units, but never completed my degree.

I eventually took a job as a Planning Technician with a County Planning Department-some 23 years ago That's worked out well for me-I'm now a certified planner and a Planning Director for a small city in California.

Geography degrees have limited marketability. You might consider Land Use or Town and Rural Planning as a major.

Answer 2

that there is no market for geographers is bull, the whole world needs geographers, just look at some of the jobs available in the GIS field, everybody from oil industry to environmental agancies need geographers. I chose geography because i did not want to limit myself to only one area such as geology or cartography. During my studies I was hoping to find work in the remote sensing field, as I enjoyed it and was proficent in ERDAS imagine, a remote sensing program. I currently work as a hyrographic surveyor (Love it) and cartographer for a company that had people filling these positions that learned the trade from only by on the job training and did not think they needed geographers either...until the changed to a more modern and in depth software (that is now the standard software for this type of application world wide), to perform these tasks and then the difference between formal training and informal training really showed with me (formally trained) being promoted to the head of the Survey dept. because I already knew the essentials to geography that the others did not need to know in the past. I also saved the company many thousands of dollars in the process because we can make are own maps rather than outsourcing them. Plus I saved them in training costs as I teach the other surveyors what the need to know to operate the new program that is the standard for the industry. I am a very lucky person I guess, I make $65,000 annually and other benefits such as medical, travel, food, company vehicle and housing. I will have been out of college 1 year in Dec. with a bachelors degree. PS....it took me all of three days to find this job, and I had other offers as well

Answer 3

Traditionally, geographers did things like surveying and map making, and still do such things today, but modern computer technologies have expanded the demand for geographic information, and hence the opportunities for geographers.

Government employs many geographers, directly or indirectly, to do satellite remote sensing, land use planning, building military systems, etc. Oil companies and environmental organizations use geographers to map natural resources. Even technology companies use geographers to build things like personal navigation systems.

If you go into geography, be sure to learn GIS software packages like ARC-Map - such skills are in demand. You should also like mathematics, as geography theory is highly mathematical. Starting salaries are not great, but decent, maybe about US 50k, or so.

To answer the rest of your questions, I didn't major in geography, but rather in a closely related earth science. My career is writing software for satellite remote sensing, and I do enjoy the geography component of my work.

I hope this was helpful. Good luck in your choice.

Answer 4

I assume that they wanted to either teach, do research or make maps. Right now one of our office clerks has this degree. She found that there was no market for this major.