Week 8 - Surveyor General and Learning Styles

Class Date: Thursday, 15th September, 2011

The majority of this week's class was taken up by a presentation from the Surveyor General of Victoria, John Tulloch.  I found it to be an interesting presentation as it outlined the umbrella of considerations that surveyors in Victoria have to work under.  Another point of interest for myself is that I shall be working in the Surveyor General's office when I graduate. It seems strange that I should be learning about my future workplace while at university but sometimes the broad overviews are hard to come by when in an organisation (I am currently working part time in the Land Titles Office). Of most interest to me was the section on the geodetic responsibilities of the office. I enrolled in this course aiming to become a cadastral surveyor but now I am more inclined to work in the geodetic field and it is encouraging to see that I'll be in a workplace where I can gain experience in that area.

The learning styles presentation from Prof. Shortis was a continuation on from last weeks class on personality types and working in teams. I'd come across this before due to previous studies. Many years ago I considered becoming a high school teacher. My classroom practicals made me quickly realise that it was not the career for me. Learning styles, personality types and psychological development were all covered early in the degree. I can see the benefits of identifying your own biases in order to be able to adapt yourself to your surrounding circumstances. It is also good to be able to gauge the styles of those who you are dealing with in order to effectively communicate with them. 

I have similar hesitations to this as I did with personality types. I'd hate to see people take this too seriously and not realise that it is merely a rough categorisation tool and not a specific measurement of the person.  And I would be disappointed if someone took a test and thought that they shall forever be one type of person and veer away from fields associated with the other classified areas. Both they and the community would be poorer because of it.