june 2009 issue

Home > Members > Publications > The PEGG > June 2009

The Geo Beat
Have You Got the Stuff of a Professional?

BY TOM SNEDDON, P.GEOL.
APEGGA Manager, Geoscience Affairs

A recent move got me thinking about Stuff, and wondering how on Earth I have accumulated so much of it.

Some Stuff is garbage, and several trips to the Spy Hill landfill helped dispose of it before it cost $2 per kilogram to move. Other Stuff involved long-completed consulting projects. The 10-year rule hasn’t moved it to the garbage category yet, so along it comes.

(The Stuff of this column, by the way, will work its way around to professional issues. Bear with me.)

More Stuff is in storage, until I get time to build/repair/complete it. Obviously (to me), that Stuff has real value, although some of it came from a different life in a different place and is now obsolete, therefore it should be relegated to the garbage category as well. Well, maybe it should.

There is, for instance, a 1930s-vintage short wave receiver I’m sure I can get going again. It only needs all the capacitors swapped out and a few new tubes. OK, a completely new set of tubes.

This Stuff involves a tough decision to keep/sell/dispose. Having thought deeply (aided by a wee dram of good 12-year-old Glenmorangie), the keep/sell portion moved to the new place and the other Stuff got sorted into the back of the pick-up for a further trip to Spy Hill. Some of the sell Stuff also went to Goodwill to find a good home with another I-can-fix-that person.

The really difficult choices were the emotional attachment/still good category of Stuff. Amongst the toughest to part with included old university class notes, especially the grad school things that contained huge quantities of midnight oil and blood. She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed had some of the same problems — and then some, because she survived a PhD, two post-docs and 30 years of fundamental research projects.

We matched blood-soaked material up to Level 5 on the pain threshold, and consigned those items to the growing garbage pile in the truck box. We handled much-loved ancient textbooks in a similar way. Can you imagine throwing away a third edition of Krumbein and Sloss? I can. Sob!

Next, attention turned to the computer collection. OK, we guys collect Stuff and your humble scribe is big on ancient computers. The oldest include a fragment of a 1970s-vintage mainframe and one of the first Z80 personal computers.

All of this computer Stuff works.

Or at least it did the last time I turned any of it on. All 26 of them. I still need a 186 and an original IBM PC. My Apple collection is complete to 2001, except for a Lisa, which I want desperately.

Anyway, a significant discussion of value ensued. In the end, excess printers, monitors and non-one-of-a-kind peripherals were relegated to the recycler. Boy, did that hurt.

Ham gear, of course, is non-negotiable. Besides, She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed is also a ham, so no hassle there. We have one other disposal method for this type of Stuff, called the Hamfest Flea Market and its first cousin, the Ham Club Flea Market, through which one can actually realize filthy lucre or make some great trades. Flea markets are to hams what field trips are to geoscientists. A place to meet, greet, trade stories and trade gear.

The only ham gear that made it into the garbage pile was a lot of non-valuable broken Stuff that couldn’t be repaired anyway. These bits and pieces joined all the other painfully departing Stuff in the back of the pick-up for one final voyage to Spy Hill, where they will have a good home for all eternity.
Heaving all that Stuff in front of the bulldozer-like packer actually turned out to be a liberating experience. Try it — you might like it.

Why do we all get so attached to Stuff? It is not just a guy thing, as most of the women I’ve talked to about this have much the same problem. The real issue is value.

Value is agonizingly difficult to apply to anything, be it a gold or oil-and-gas prospect or some old university notes. As professionals, we like to believe we are dispassionate about things (remember, “thing” is a well-defined concept in law). We have tools like CIMVal and the Canadian Oil and Gas Evaluation Handbook to define value for properties. We have marvelous computer codes for determining the net present value or future value for anything, based on some baseline value.

In the final analysis though, value is a subjective judgment based on experience and how we feel about something. It is an emotional thing.

Stuff includes emotional baggage we collect over the years, which may be positive (good professional judgment) or negative (prejudice). If you do not know yourself, and therefore undervalue your services, you cannot serve society to the best of your ability.

The title — whether Professional Geologist, Professional Geophysicist, Registered Professional Technologist (Geological or Geophysical) or soon Professional Geoscientist — that you tack after your name is concrete recognition from a panel of your peers that you have real, measurable value, and great value at that.

APEGGA does not sell you a licence to practice geoscience — it grants you a licence that you have earned. The annual fee becomes a reminder of what it means to be a licensed professional and the value the title brings to you.

One of the things the Manager of Geoscience Affairs does is help people with the registration process, mostly by just listening to the applicant and often helping him or her decide whether to apply.

A surprising number of applicants have been working in the field for a long time, unlicensed, because they were reluctant to place their credentials before the Board of Examiners. Others really are not qualified and the discussion turns to how to overcome the deficiencies they need to clear before applying for registration.

The source of an applicant’s reluctance is usually a deep sense of low value or self-worth. These individuals were prepared to work for firms that exploited their expertise (often considerable
expertise) for low pay because they believed it was all they were worth.

It has been gratifying to see how many of these people blossomed as professionals, after they successfully registered and were granted their licences to practice. Like unloading Stuff at the landfill, being recognized by fellow geoscientists as a full practitioner can be a liberating experience.

If you know someone who is qualified and would benefit from registration, encourage him or her to try. It could increase the value of your friendship — and dump some Stuff in the process.