David Schmitz (BS Geology, 2004)

Until you see another update here, I'm probably still searching for a job that makes good on anything I learned in college. Anyone need a geology guy with a GIS certficate and a math minor who has held a federal job?

Going back in time, after returning home from Mitchell, I spent a couple of months counting inventory for an electrical distributor here in Bremerton. I'd driven their local delivery truck for a couple of summers beforehand. Once that was over around Thanksgiving, I was deep in the throes of joblessness, with basically hours of Civilization III and the final playoff run by the Sonics keeping me sane. The NHL was locked out, but it turns out there's a junior hockey team that plays in Bremerton, and I ran the soundboard for them. I made sure the Puget Sound Tomahawks skated onto the rink for the third period to "For Whom the Bell Tolls." After getting rejected for a local Excel minion job for which there was no way I wasn't qualified, I got a call while I was watching March Madness.

Three months later, I found myself in Hawaii. The job? The vague title was "physical science technician," which is a broad government-speak term. The real title was "radiological controls technician." Basically you wave radiation detectors around to see how radioactive stuff is, and you have to respond to any anomalous situations. It's a great job if you really like getting overtime. It's also great if you don't mind finding out until 3pm on Friday whether you have a free weekend. Anyway, I did that for 3.5 years and while I enjoyed the people I worked with and enjoyed going to Norfolk, Virginia twice (for a combined nine months), I didn't really enjoy the job and had trouble seeing why they required a college degree for it. Then they wonder why they can't retain people.

For the record, while in Hawaii I lived in Aiea, then Manoa, and finally in Kaneohe. I never left Oahu, which is like geological sacrilege, I know.

So after I made sure my student loans were paid off, I left the job and left Hawaii. The economy tanked just afterward, but since I've always got a place in Bremerton and I'm not having to raise a family, the only grave trouble I'm in will be if the time gap on my resume is too large.

What's the past few months been like? I went back to the rink and took the soundboard again, played too many hours of Civilization IV, and scattered the earth with job applications. Miraculously, the fax machine at FedEx Office in Silverdale has only eaten my papers once out of dozens of times faxing my college transcripts. Also, I returned to the comfort of complaining about the Mariners every night on a sports weblog (est. 2003) and done some horribly amateur photography and some video stuff.

Okay, I guess that's about it. It'll be updated when an actual job is obtained.