Global Wonders: Remarkable Discoveries From Around The World

With that being said, Bored Panda reached out to Farrah Etcheverry, who is a co-owner of Etcheverry Land Surveying which provides Land Measurement and Geographic Mapping services for clients located in the Southwest. Farrah was kind enough to share some interesting things about her field of work, so make sure to check out an interview with her down below!

Not a lot of people actually know that a profession such as land surveyor exists, and even if some do, there is a small number of individuals who actually know what the role consists of. Farrah shared what she does on a daily basis as well as some facts about her job overall.

“You are correct, not very many people know what a land surveyor is or does. In essence, we are professional measurers. On a daily basis, I work on projects like boundary surveys for both large plots of land and small residential ones, topographic surveys to show the lay of the land, construction layout/staking, ALTA surveys, volume calculations of large quantities of natural material, and more!“ She told Bored Panda.

We previously mentioned that Farrah is a co-owner of a land surveying company, so we asked her if it was more of a freelance type of work or if they were getting contracted by states or even private firms. “I am the co-owner of our land surveying company, there are lots of small survey businesses, and also larger engineering firms who employ land surveyors. In a lot of states, each county also has a surveyor on staff.”

Speaking more about the land surveyor's job, Etcheverry also shared with us some of the hardest things about the work she does. “The hardest part about my job, at least right now, is keeping up with the workload. There is so much work and not enough surveyors to go around, so timelines for finishing projects become the most stressful part.”

Interestingly enough, because of how niche her field is, Farrah actually has the ability to choose if she wants to travel around or not. “Because surveying is such a niche profession, we have the ability to choose either to travel around (become licensed in multiple states) or to primarily work locally. We do a bit of both, our main hub is my hometown and surrounding cities, but we travel all over Arizona to work. I have also traveled to Hawaii for survey work as well.”

If all of that sounds interesting to you, Pandas, well, Farrah also explained to us what kind of tools one needs to get the job done. “We use a litany of tools to perform our job accurately. On the daily, we use a robotic total station, GPS base and rover, drone, and processing software for data crunching and drafting.”

We haven't touched much on the topic of the maps, therefore we asked Etcheverry to explain to us what a finished map consists of. “Mapping is one of my favorite parts of surveying, seeing the finished fieldwork on the paper presented in a way the client can understand and use the information is incredibly satisfying! What a particular map includes is dependent upon the type of survey that was performed, but all maps should include basics such as a title, the location of the property, a north arrow, scale, and legend if necessary.” She explained to us.

Farrah already mentioned that her field is quite a niche one so we asked her if getting into this profession was something she dreamed of as a child or if it it was something that happened gradually. “It wasn't my childhood dream to become a surveyor, I thought I would end up somewhere in the field of healthcare. It wasn't until I was about 19 that I seriously considered going to work for my dad who at that point had owned his own survey company for about 15 years. He is the only reason that I knew what a surveyor was and he showed me how fun and fulfilling it could be as a profession.”

Statistically, a lot more men work as land surveyors, we asked Etcheverry to explain to us why the profession isn't as popular with women as it is with men.

“I think the reason surveying historically has been less popular to women is because of the pre-conceived idea that all it is is days and days of hard labor, cutting line, pounding hubs, surrounded by men who curse and chew tobacco. But that simply is not the case, while yes, there is hard labor involved, digging, hammering, hiking, chopping, etc... there is also a lot of mind work to be done, solving new problems every day, piecing new puzzles together. I think if more women saw the analytical side of what a surveyor does, they may take a bit more interest!”

We often share travel tips and tricks on Bored Panda as well as some interesting destinations one can add to their bucket list (this post is proof of that) so given the opportunity, we asked Farrah to share with us some of her travel do's and don'ts! “My travel do's and don'ts... My top don't is do NOT wear flip-flops to the airport. You must wear shoes with socks... DO bring a snack and a good book, and put an air tag in your bag.... just in case!”

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