The 1980s oil bust is what kept me from becoming a petroleum geologist. Saw it coming about six months before it hit and changed my major. Everyone at the time thought I was nuts. But folks who were in the program with me didn’t have jobs in their field a decade later. Hopefully they are doing well now.
I can relate. I wanted to be a nuclear engineer about the time of Three Mile Island.
I was in Midland in the early eighties, there were no homes or apartments available. Lived in the Holiday Inn for 4 months, never stayed in one again;^)
We had geologists working in the file room at Chevron, hoping to stay close to their field in case things came back. They never did.