What Do You NOT Love About Working In Environmental Forestry Management

Video Transcript

What is something you do not love about environmental or forestry management? Like any career, there’s downfalls, but in my opinion, it’s not very well respected or compensated. So what I mean by that is I can talk to a bunch of people about what I do and either they tune me out or they just passively listen. They’re not really, truly engaged. And that’s unfortunate because agriculture is what our world spins around. Literally, if you don’t have that, you are essentially naked and hungry and without shelter. Right so it’s truly important to understand those. And that’s what’s really hard about this industry, is getting across that information in the right way and finding the right platform or, you know, whatever that might be. That’s one of the hardest things. And then in turn, I think it’s not compensated very well, like the average teacher makes $40,000 a year and we pour our heart, blood, sweat, and tears into those children. Right same with forestry. Like you are out in the weather, in the cold, in the heat, taking care of those trees. Trees are exponentially important in our world. And you get a $40,000 paycheck. It’s kind of the other side of the coin. And what I do like is that when there’s so many people and interests involved, there can be a ton of bureaucracy. It can be very challenging to make small decisions and move forward in projects based because everyone has so many different ideas of where they want it to go, that even the smallest decisions can become somewhat controversial and there can be a lot of different opinions. And so there can be more not necessarily chaos, but a lot of disagreement. And so sometimes it is hard to get things done. And oftentimes if you’re more at the people on the ground, so to speak, and not the ones high at making decisions, it often feels like we’re not necessarily accomplishing as much as we could be because there’s a lot of bureaucracy going on above our heads that we are not privy to their decisions necessarily. So it can be a bit of a challenge in that regard. What I used to hate or I still hate or not. Line is back in my I used to be a consultant. That role is so basically a subcontractor for all kinds of businesses helping their environmental compliance or environmental needs. And one of the things that’s required of that is time management, specifically logging all of your time, having to log the 15 minute increments of my daily life and trying to make sure I’m billable for the week. The more billable you are, the more profitable you are for the company. It’s just the way the industry works better or worse. I dislike that because some projects I might have two hours to complete the project that’s allotted to me, but it takes me four hours. I went over budget, but there is this game we have to play of. OK, you spend more time on this project, but you spent less time on this to make up the hour and you don’t lie about your hours. But it’s how do you manage all that time? I just hate that. This is an answer that a few years ago, I wouldn’t have thought this would be something I didn’t like. But personally myself, I’ve had some health issues, so I can’t do like that field work where you do long hikes in long camping trips. I can’t do that anymore and I don’t like it anymore. That’s one aspect of the job that I just don’t care for. I would say the impression that people believe that people have of you whenever they learn that she work in that type of field because they have an idea of already in their head.