A Question of Relevance „ Greg Crites, PLS The Oregon Surveyor | Vol. 39, No. 3 2 FROM THE EDITOR Keeping with my theme this year of focusing on the virtues of a career in surveying, I need to mention relevance. All of us in this profession are hearing sabre rattling naysayers (Spiro Agnew would have called them “nattering nabobs of negativism”) intimating that our profession is losing its relevancy! Frankly, I’m of the opinion that this is mere “kaka,” but I may need to defend my premise. I may be mistaken, but I don’t think there’s one of us who are actively practicing land surveyors that feel irrelevant! Who among us isn’t passionate about what we do and, if we are seriously introspective, wouldn’t count our blessings for the joys this profession uniquely aords us? Working outdoors (some of us even get to do that when WE choose to) in this beautiful place we call the Pacic Northwest: reading and interpreting the law with respect to real property, using mathematics on a regular basis, exercising our communication skills on professional/ technical subjects, both verbal and written, studying history and telling about it, solving complex puzzles involving the interpretation of latent/patent ambiguities in deeds,’ resolving errors on records of surveys (both yours and others) in the course of doing boundary resolutions, amateur archaeology and so on. Can you think of another profession that requires some level of understanding on such a broad range of subjects? Practicing outside your area of expertise becomes a dicult subject when land surveying requires skills on so many fronts. We’ve touched on the subject many times and I’ll continue to support anyone who wants to do more, but the bottom line is, the passion we all share, the joys we derive from the practice of our cra (okay, profession) and the ease at which we nd ourselves looking forward to coming to work every day should be reason enough for anyone to want to know what it is that makes us so. What we need to do is gure out how to tell that story, not to just future land surveyors, but to all those other allied professions that could benet from partaking in our expertise. is issue of e Oregon Surveyor is replete with examples of that expertise manifested in several ways; photography, scholarly articles and so on. ink about your own enthusiasm for this profession and gure out how to tell others about it.
PLSO May June 2016
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