Mining and engineering have always gotten my attention. I have never known of the career of mining engineering. When I heard this, I knew I would be interested at once. One of the good things about mining engineering is that if the worker knows a foreign language, then they will have a chance to go across the sea to other countries to help the miners. I was disappointed with the fact that there are some bad things abut this job. One of them is that the worker may have to go to the mining site and it could be dark, musky, and possible cave-ins! I knew that this job would be difficult to get used to, but enjoyable after I got the hang of it.
I saw an entire category on what classes and majors to take and I was very happy. According to the Careers in Focus: Engineering, the classes very recommended by many mining engineering projects, are math and science (Ferguson 101-108). Also, the book states that a bachelors degree in engineering helps, but not as good as a masters in mining engineering. People have to get these in an accredited mining program to be noticed by many places, and to get a leg up on the competition. In all of my school subjects, math and science are my absolute favorites.
The number of hours that a mining engineer works surprised me. A usual week has the normal number of hours of forty hours per week (Ferguson 101-108). Sometimes, one has to work more than this number under stressful conditions.
The work environment is a very unstable place. The worker could be working at one location one week, and move across the country another week. One either works outside or just researches inside, but has to be flexible to the location (Ferguson 101-108). It would be as if I worked in a North Carolina office one week, and moved to a mine site in California the next. As a comparison, one usually works at the mining site more than just in an office.
There are many ways to climb up the top of this cooperate ladder. One must start out with in-house training and will gradually increase (Ferguson 101-108). After the beginning work, one will then learn as an apprentice, and help the mentor with the jobs. Then the apprentice will start working on his own and will become more independent on the mining engineering jobs. Once they get the hang of it, they will then start directing specific mining projects, head research projects, or even work as technical specialists on other jobs.
This job's salary is very good for me. It is ranged according to the place on the so called “ladder” in the cooperate system. It starts out with a below $36,000 range, then goes up to the $60,000's, then finally, with a masters, above $100,000 to the range that I want to be at very badly (Ferguson 101-108).
There are not that many skills or traits that one must have to be effective in this job area. Two of them are that one must be mechanical, and Technical. One must also be scientific, and must use logic and other math based skills to determine where to mine, and how the workers should act safely in the mines. Another skill in the mining engineering field is to be able to work with others in a group. Some last great traits to have for this job is to have a good imagination, and to be able to think analytically (Ferguson 101-108).
There are a lot of great benefits to this job. According to US Department of Labor, one of them is that you get over ten holidays, many vacation days a year, around five sick days, and some floating holidays where you take of for just any days. As well as all these days off, one gets a welfare and retirement fund for good workers (Bureau of Labor Statistics 212).
The job competition for this job is going down steadily. There are around 6,500 engineers today in the area of mining or geological engineers in the United States today. Only about half of them actually work as mining engineers. One can imagine that mining engineers are not all that popular by just asking a small child what they want to be when they grow up. Most of the time, they do not answer with mining engineer. It is predicted that the demand for mining engineers will drop by the year 2010 (Ferguson 101-108).
Most people hear mining and think of cold, dark tunnels, and sweaty, dirty men. They also think engineering is just working in a big factory, or sitting at a desk, writing boring papers. They are mostly wrong about those, and they probably don't know even what a mining engineer is. I was one of those people, until I researched on this job and found out about all the good and bad things about it. I learned that they get a good amount of benefits, have good attitudes, and earn a good amount of money for what they do. I also learned that they advance, just like in any job, and that the amount of them needed are going down. Even though this would be a tough job to get used to, I feel that I will pursue this job further, at least until I find a job with a lot of math based skills.
