I'm caught in a tight moment of my academic life. I'm rather unsure about furthering into the geography masters program, or just getting my bachelor's and crossing my fingers. Currently, I have 17 credits left (likely due to the fact that I failed a sociology course a year ago), so I should probably focusing on having a set class roster before the thought of applying for the masters program hits me.
Believe it or not, the idea of me leaving college kind of unnerves me. With the current state of geography as a discipline and my job hanging out of the bounds, I'm stumped. Being in college at least gives me something to lean on, even at financial expense. Geography in and of itself is a largely post-grad type of discipline. Most jobs, like in USGS, ESRI, and Trimble, usually largely look for masters and general graduate students. Bachelors? Kinda shit out of luck. The state of my job/internship is also quite fucked. Trump budget cuts hit our little lab hard due to the fact that our clients are federally funded by FEMA and DOT data centers, both of which have been immensely hit by Trump's moves. If the clients lose their fundining, they can't afford to fund us. And if they can't afford to fund us? Yeah. Luckily, we have enough reserves to get by for a couple of years, but largely the plan is to lay me off from the lab by September, since as an intern about to graduate I am considered a non-priority employee to stay on the team. It's understandable, yes sad, but still understandable. If I stay in the masters program I am more than likely to keep my job as a constant intern, but still.
I've been getting many notifications on the GIS subreddit about the state of the job market. It's beginning to sound like the shitty CompSci job market is now hitting GIS which is fun. Two years ago it seemed much more promising since it was one of those niche disciplines, but in the past two years, I've been hearing more and more about the job market not being good anymore due to general degree saturization. So what's my plan? I don't know. Thug it out? You can say that about many aspects of life. Thug it out! Maybe I'll return to my horrendous UAlbany IT job, or back to the good ol' grocery store produce employee. Ahhhhhhhh.
In good news, I just developed a couple of HP5 rolls I shot on my EOS 7S from a show I went to Saturday night. I also have some photos from a show I went to last September, but it was more personal live show that I wouldn't want to post about. The photos I took from 2 nights ago came out really great, so hopefully I will be able to make some enlargements from the negatives soon! 2 months into owning the 5DmkII and it's been great. If you've been on my site for a while you'd understand how big of an upgrade the 5DmkII is for me (just look at my older show photos), 21 megapixels with live view... Despite being a DSLR from 2009, it feels so new. I hear about people sticking to their MkII's and MkIII's into the 2020s. I understand the notion of "gear doesn't make the photographer", but arguable, it does. You'll never see me with R bodies though haha.
I may throw some photos from the September show up on the misc photos section of the site just so you guys can see how magical the 5DmkII is. Hopefully the HP5 photos will be up soon, too. The most noticeable things about the negatives coming from the EOS 7S is the fact that they have rough borders, and that the negatives are VERY SLIGHTLY askew. I have no clue how and have tried to understand and diagnose the issue in the camera (pressure plate is a little bit shifted, but the film transport seems fine) but I could not entirely figure it out.