Geographic Information System

I am venturing into the field of spatial information. Spatial meaning it has attributes that can be located in a map. I remember my teacher in Introduction to GIS say: "If it's not in the map, it does not exist!" That is the very essence of spatial information. It has geographic coordinates.

I am merely starting to earn my interest in my chosen career path when i encountered this term; GIS. I was in the BS Forestry curriculum for my undergraduate degree. I am just a little wanderer that time. Just going with the flow. Study botany, zoology, scientific names, family names, identify tree species, wearing a hard hat with matching "bayong" where to put the collected specimens to study. Leaf phyllotaxy, morphology, anatomy and everything that I need to know in order to properly name a tree, a vine, or any living vascular and non-vascular plant. I was just enjoying lots of field trips. What a ton of money for on the average, there are 3 field trips in a semester which are two to three days long. But I didn't mind joining the trips for I want to enjoy life and travel as much as I could. Travel to the north and south and back and forth.

It was in my junior year when I am about to specialize that I chose to major in Forest and Environmental Resources Management. Maybe through bandwagon, I opted to choose FERM. This one has the most number of major students and everyone after graduating lands a job! This has been my motivation for I wanted to start working right after graduation. And when you are a FERM major, you feel like you are at par! Not only that we are in the second floor of the building but because most of the employers are looking for someone good in GIS. It is because GIS is already an essential part of every study either in social, environment, business and the likes. If you have a knowledge or even a simple background in GIS, you are at an advantage position among others. In this globally changing world, spatial information is at its peak and sophistication.

Today, I am working as a GIS Technician in a foreign-supported project on Hazards Mapping. This is my first [and maybe the last] job since I graduated in 2009. I do some analysis of the data gathered from fieldwork with the aid of a GIS software. Outputs produced are digital and printed maps that will show the susceptibility of an area to flooding/flashflooding. I stay in the office and do all the tasks of a research person. I gain a lot of knowledge via the internet. I am also thrown at different seminars and trainings so as to improve myself into my craft. Personally, I do readings and attend web seminars which are quite exciting. I got to listen to experts in the field of geographic information systems. I try their free softwares and experiment on myself. Later on, I apply those that I learn in my work to facilitate the analysis. It is a great task. Not that toxic for i have some time to relax and visit social networking sites. I can even have a nap and I do not worry of deadlines for I do the work fast. It has been two years since I started to work here at the state weather bureau and I feel like I have not been that stressed.

On the other hand, GIS has been my hobby. I was a frustrated computer scientist. I really wanted to study this particular course but I was not able to do so. This has also been one of my reasons in venturing into the world of GIS per se. I love discovering things spatially. It excites me when there is a new software to be used and I eagerly study those. By engaging in GIS, I feel like a computer scientist already!