Mining Engineering

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. 