Elders

I am starting to be trusted to take on more responsibility at work as my experience grows as a graduate. This includes talking more 1 on 1 with farmers and being able to try and figure out client issues by myself before running them past someone more senior.

I love that my role is to help people. What is more meaningful than that? I like everything we do, except maybe the emotional support person. But that is not meaningless, so I have given my answer as 10. The training tools to keep me busy during the quiet times are a bit boring, but I also know that they too are important, particularly while I'm learning.

I spend most of the week with my mentor learning off them while they service their clients. I also service two elders branches myself and have some of my own clients at my branch so there is a fair bit of independence requried which Elders encourage early on. A lot of time is spent on the road, seeing farmers and their paddocks to diagnose problems and come up with solutions. There is also a lot of time spent in the office researching data and trial work as agronomy is always changing so we need to stay up to date with changes. Later in the season you spend large portions of the week travelling all over WA for field days and seeing different agronomic practices in different environments which I think is really important to take back home to your own clients. Lots of the work that isn't done in person is done on the phone/or via email so you do spend a lot of time answering questions on the phone

Pretty good when its busy, following agronomists and learning off them, when stuck in office sometimes there is not much to do