I'm a great 'Holder-of-the-Rod'

And I'm great at reading instruments! I had my first Surveying and Mapping lab today, all about leveling. Let me tell you, after 2.5 hours out in the sun, we were pretty good at leveling. First I held the rod. A nice stick that is 7.35 feet tall, but doubles, and walked about campus being cute. Many people stopped to ask the obivous, "are you surveying something". Funny-"no I'm holding this stick becuase I like to know how tall things are....in the middle of a field" Then I got to record things in my new, orange, field notebook. Lastly, I got to play with the instrument, and level it and read the nice rod that one of my lab partners was now holding. We did the same route (well close) three times, each taking a role. We were only off by 3 hundreths of a foot (about 3/8 of an inch)--we're pretty rockin for our first try. I think I'm gonna like that class!