When I started college I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do. In high school I started working at various restaurants in my neighborhood as a bus boy, dishwasher, and cook and knew that I did not want to do that the rest of my life. Luckily the community college near me was very cheap so I was able to drift around and take any class I wanted for a mere $500 a semester.
Eventually I found a couple of archaeology classes that really peaked my interest. After those classes I was hooked. I immediately became motivated and started working hard on moving on to the university. In 2003 I graduated from Pima Community College with an Associate of Arts in Anthropology. Pima College also had field work certifications through their Archaeology Centre. I took many of those classes and eventually earned two of the certificates.
The next fall I enrolled at the University of Arizona in the Anthropology Department. I took as many different classes as I could to get a sense of what specialty I wanted to do. What really struck me about archaeology was how different and similar people can be across such large landscapes. This is where my interest in geographic information science began. I wanted to use GIS techniques to discuss larger landscape questions in archaeology. In 2005 I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology.
The summer after I graduated I worked a couple of archaeology jobs. The job I had through college paid well and at that point I had worked myself into a great position. I was able to work on designing databases and learn GIS in my off time. I did not know whether I wanted to continue with graduate school since not a lot of departments really worked in the area I did so I decided to stick with the college job and pay off some student loans. After a few years the economy fell out and my employer was really suffering. I went back part time to Pima College to wrap up the certifications that I had started. A few years after that I started to look around for archaeology jobs. They were few and far between so I started looking around at graduate school again. I managed to land a few short term project and eventually found a permanent GIS position with an archaeology firm. While there I stumbled upon a new program at the University of Arizona. It was a one calendar year Masters in GIS and sounded exactly like what I wanted. Over the next year I worked full time doing GIS with that firm and completed my Masters of Science in Geographic Information Systems Technology in 2011.
Since then I have been working as a GIS professional with a firm in Tucson, Arizona.
Eventually I found a couple of archaeology classes that really peaked my interest. After those classes I was hooked. I immediately became motivated and started working hard on moving on to the university. In 2003 I graduated from Pima Community College with an Associate of Arts in Anthropology. Pima College also had field work certifications through their Archaeology Centre. I took many of those classes and eventually earned two of the certificates.
The next fall I enrolled at the University of Arizona in the Anthropology Department. I took as many different classes as I could to get a sense of what specialty I wanted to do. What really struck me about archaeology was how different and similar people can be across such large landscapes. This is where my interest in geographic information science began. I wanted to use GIS techniques to discuss larger landscape questions in archaeology. In 2005 I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology.
The summer after I graduated I worked a couple of archaeology jobs. The job I had through college paid well and at that point I had worked myself into a great position. I was able to work on designing databases and learn GIS in my off time. I did not know whether I wanted to continue with graduate school since not a lot of departments really worked in the area I did so I decided to stick with the college job and pay off some student loans. After a few years the economy fell out and my employer was really suffering. I went back part time to Pima College to wrap up the certifications that I had started. A few years after that I started to look around for archaeology jobs. They were few and far between so I started looking around at graduate school again. I managed to land a few short term project and eventually found a permanent GIS position with an archaeology firm. While there I stumbled upon a new program at the University of Arizona. It was a one calendar year Masters in GIS and sounded exactly like what I wanted. Over the next year I worked full time doing GIS with that firm and completed my Masters of Science in Geographic Information Systems Technology in 2011.
Since then I have been working as a GIS professional with a firm in Tucson, Arizona.