RE: Radiation Control Technician

["Armstrong, Jason (PEA)" <jarmstro@guidant.com>]

	My 3 cents...I started as road tech in February '91 working laundry
at Zion.  I had no degree (3 years of college), no experience.  Fortunately,
I caught up with a plant Health Physicist who took me under his wing and
convinced the HP dept to make me a Junior HP tech.  I did that for 3 years
(east coast to west coast).  One day, as I was doing my exit whole body
count at the end of an outage, the same health physicist took me aside and
said that I needed to get a HP degree if I wanted to stay in the business.
That fall, I enrolled at Oregon State and worked as a Radiation Monitor for
the university and caught a few late summer outages to make ends meet.  In
'96, I graduated with a BS in Health Physics.  It took me 5 months to get a
HP job after I graduated.  My view is, if you REALLY want to be a RCT/HP get
the degree (AS or BS) and get the experience (Navy, short outage, or BFE).
I personally like health physics very much, I really did not care where I
went as long I was doing something I enjoyed.  I believe that you really
need that attitude if want to succeed in a health physics career.
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