Not From Toronto
 

Home » Archives » February 2005 » professional, baby!

[Previous entry: "work shift"] [Next entry: "slip of the tongue"]

02/10/2005: "professional, baby!"


As one of the many different flavours of engineer, one thing I'm able to do is apply for Professional status from the governing body here in Ontario. All I have to do is pass a law test, an ethics test, and get 3 years of experience under my belt. Well, I graduated in 1997, and it's 2005 - do the math, I'm quite eligible.

I started the whole process as soon as I graduated, and it's been a long road...

Just after graduation I took the ethics and law exam. No problem there, it was pretty straight forward. Read the law book, and practice common sense with ethics, and you're there. Once that had been completed (in early 1998) I had to get engineering experience. All I could do there was wait.

Well, I waited, and got what I needed. At that point I had landed at my job in Cambridge, and figured that I'd be there for a while, so there was no need to hurry up and get my Professional status. Well, turns out that was the place that dismissed me, and thus I got dumped into a job market without having my status. D'oh. In the 13 months that ensued, I worked on it, but didn't hand it in quite yet.

I was under the mistaken impression that I had to pay the professional fee at the time that I handed my experience profile in. This fee is nearly $200, which was quite a lot back when I was borrowing from Mom & Dad and getting EI, so I held off. Even after I got a job I held back, as we were still quite tight for cash.

It was only January last year that I re-read the instructions for submitting my final application, and it was THEN that I realized that payment didn't happen until after my experience profile was approved. D'oh, again! I finally got everything together and sent it off, January 7th 2004. I expected to be a Professional in a few months.

Time goes by... and by... and by. Nothing. I call for an update, and find out that only two of my four references have returned their information! Crikey! I quickly do some digging, and find out that one of the references has since left the position I thought he was at, and I had to track him down at home. The other three, on the other hand, were still where I left them, but they simply weren't responding! What's even more incredible, all three were from the same company! What ensued was many months of sporadic phone calls to see what's going on.

Well, I can FINALLY say that I hounded them enough. I just phoned, and was told that my experience has been approved! Everyone finally responded, so I should be getting a letter soon asking for my professional fee and informing me of my status. Woo-hoo!! It's only taken 13 months once I got it underway, and is only 5 years late, but hey, I finally have it!

This should hopefully mean good things for my jobsearch. Now I have to figure out the best way to get that information out there in a timely manner. I've already contacted the current hot leads and let them know, so it's a matter of who else I should tell, or want to tell. Recruiters? Mmm... maybe.

Of course, the biggest benefit of all this? I can finally sign passport applications for people.

Replies: 1 Comment

on Friday, February 11th, Jerry said

Congrats Andrew! (8-)

JGH

New! RSS Feed!
 
Home
Archives
2004 and on
2003
2002
 
Dave Howlett's WOMBLOG
Mobuzz TV
Stu's Travels
Warpfish Stories
Mike Diehl
Church Dude
 

February 2005
SMTWTFS
  12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728     

Listed on BlogsCanada