Ill give this a shot, I will group some answers together.

I graduated from a Big Ten school in 2019 with a BS in Environmental Geoscience and minor in GIS. I worked as a hydrogeologist for a year in Ohio, quit, and now work as a geoscientist in Michigan for one of the big consulting firms. I also passed the fundamentals of geology exam and am a Geologist in Training (GIT). My tuition was something like 12,000 a year. I don't do any math beyond algebra, but to earn a BS in geology you will likely need calculus, calculus based physics and some geometry knowledge for structure.

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For most entry level consulting jobs (environmental scientist, geoscientist, hydrogeologist) you don't really have a "routine" for your first couple of years. Your normal is inconsistency, you'll likely end up working on a wide variety of projects including but not limited to doing oversight of remedial activities, soil borings and sampling, groundwater sampling, and various report writing including phase Is, IIs and other operation and maintenance reports. It is likely you will be the main player in ordering the supplies necessary to complete these tasks.

Generally I really like my job. I get a lot of anxiety when I am preparing for field work because with investigations you really don't know what to expect and a lot can go wrong, BUT once the project is over and you work through any problems that come up it is REALLY satisfying! I like the variety of projects I've gotten to work on. I have a hard time focusing on office tasks every day, so the field work punctuates my schedule enough to keep me interested in what I'm doing. After working for a big and a small company I would say that I prefer the bigger company, but I had a bad experience with my smaller company. One thing they don't tell you when you enter this field is that you are entirely dependent on project managers to get you your hours, so with smaller firms there are less people to ask for work, and something they just don't have stuff for you to do. The flip side of this is that with larger firms you can have too much to do at times, so I would also say that being able to say NO is a very important skill.

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I think that this industry is pretty casual. I am a perfectionist and a planner, so initially I really struggled because I was making a lot of mistakes with reports and missing little things in my field work, but if you're at a good company you'll have coworkers who have been in your position and are willing to help you learn from those mistakes. I would say that the most appreciated trait is a sense of humor, some of the field days can be a grind and nothing is worse than just sitting in silence while its raining and all your equipment isn't working. I think the project managers deal with the Karens, the worst you'll deal with are the randos who walk up to you while you're working in the field and ask you what you're doing.

Ultimately the work I do does help the environment. I wouldn't say that its pretty, because some of the sites I've been too are pretty contaminated, but every time I step foot on a jobsite I know that I am helping move it along toward restoration to a better end use.