I'm not a surveyor, but I'm the son of a civil engineer/surveyor, and did a lot of it over the years.
The changes in technology over the past 20 years have been nothing short of amazing. The new total stations are incredible, and can make what used to take 5 hours take an hour. The part that I really liked about it was the courthouse and archives work. More than once I ended up at the state archives in Harrisburg researching land grants issued by William Penn or one of his heirs.
The field work could also be interesting, but there were times when it was a real pain in the butt, such as having to carry a 40 pound transit and tripod pretty much straight up the side of a mountain.
I can't tell you how many times I got sunburned, wind chapped, frozen to with in an inch of solidity, while surveying.
Unfortunately, I could never handle the math, so I never followed in my father's footsteps as a surveyor/civil engineer.
What I could handle, though, was the triganometry that surveying required. Trig was also the only math class that I ever really did well in, largely because I could see its practical applications, and because I had been applying basic trig for so many years by the time I got to that class.
