Ignacio Rivera

Your job can be good and bad

         Ignacio Rivera is a very intelligent man who somewhat loves his job. “It’s a job,” answered Ignacio an Environmental Engineer at SpaWar in San Diego California when I asked him how he liked his job. He has been working here at SpaWar for about 15 years now and he says, “I like it at times.” Some projects that he has worked on in the past have been a horrible experience and some are the best experiences he has ever had with a project. “There was this project on developing a model to estimate the water quality criterion for copper in coastal harbors.  The project lasted about five years, and included scientists from several different areas of expertise, including, modelers, biologists, chemists, oceanographers, toxicologists, etc. There were several publications out of this project, and the final product is in the process to be approved by EPA for use in coastal environments.” This is Ignacio’s most memorable project of his career. I asked Ignacio why he likes his job and he responded, “Some projects are way off my field of expertise, and require extra effort to deal with.  In contrast, those projects that involve my actual expertise seem to be the more interesting ones.” This was interesting to me because some people wonder how someone can work in a job that they don’t like or are not interested in. Here is a man who still tries hard and puts in all of his effort even if he doesn’t like what he is working on at the moment. The benefit of this makes the projects he does like working on that much more interesting and exciting.

         Going back to Ignacio’s earlier years in life that led him up to being what he is now, I asked him some questions about how he got into this career field. With the first question being, 30 years ago would you see yourself in this position? If no what did you want to be? When Ignacio was a young boy his dad was his role model who was an accountant. So being a role model to him when Ignacio was a boy he wanted to be just like his dad and that was an accountant. When I asked Ignacio what steps he took to get where he is now I was shocked to hear what he had to say. In his younger years he was not to blown away by chemistry and learning it, but when all of his friends loved it and got him “hooked” he could not hold back the pier pressure. It became a study group, where his group of friends got together and helped each other study before tests. In high school and college Chemistry was not hard at all for him because he got into it.  In college he decided to get on the chemical track for Ocean Sciences. “After College I worked as environmental scientist in Mexico, and found out that I needed better knowledge in analytical chemistry.” Says Ignacio. He later came to the United States to get his masters degree in Analytical Chemistry, and later he had the opportunity to get his doctorate degree in Geochemistry where he studied heavy metals in aquatic environments.

         In this economy, if you asked many people how they feel about their job security, some would not be too confident. Now if you work for the government this is another story. Ignacio has been working for at SpaWar for a little over 15 years. Now SpaWar is part of the Department of Defense (part of the government), the government does not want to start firing its employees, this would make the job of rebuilding the economy many times harder. With much experience, Ignacio says he feels “safe” where he is now and has no plans to leave where he is working to find a different job.  

 

Ignacio working in the clean room at SpaWar San Diego preparing samples