Gettin' my steel-toes dirty in Midland
culture  

Gettin' my steel-toes dirty in Midland

I just woke up….after sleeping for about 18 hours. I think it’s called exhaustion…

Last Thursday through Saturday, I flew out for my second round interview for Schlumberger to Midland, Texas. I had an internship before with Schlumberger this past summer as a mechanical engineering intern and was based in Houston Texas (read my previous blog Adventures in Internships). But this time around I was sent to Midland to experience firsthand the life behind a field engineer and see current oil rig sites…in the middle of nowhere.

The three day excursion was probably the toughest thing I’ve had to go through. In three days, I probably slept about 6-7 hours total. There were about 15 candidates that were in my interview session and 2 recruiters. Day 1: We were kept from 7pm until 4am in these presentations in a conference room in the hotel we were staying in. We had to give short introductory presentations on the different segments of Schlumberger in groups that we had formed before flying out to Midland. I was paired with a student from UCSB and UF to give a presentation on Wireline Logging. In addition to sitting through the other groups’ presentations, we then listened to the official presentation on each segment given by our two fearless recruiters, Aan and Akshay (two former field engineers). We also had a ton of time for questions about the technology and the lifestyle of the field engineer. We were kept until 4am —and that was after we had all been traveling to get to Midland. I had woken up for a 530am pick up and caught two connecting flights to get to the interview location. They fed us snacks and supplied a ton of caffeine. Day 2: After sleeping about 3-4 hours, we all left our cushy hotel at 8am to visit the work sites and saw actual oil rigs, etc–and saw all the stuff we learned about the night before. We were suited up in the Schlumberger blue coveralls and wore hard hats and steel toes for the entire day. We visited 4 different sites that were about an hour or so drive away from one another. We were on our feet until 7pm that night, then went to a nice dinner, followed by self presentations and individual exit interviews. We ended the night at around 3am.

I woke up the next morning early to leave the hotel at 7am to catch my flights back to LA. I think it goes without saying that I was TIRED. I slept for most of the flights and took a quick nap back at Tech so I could attend Page Interhouse that night. PHEW! No wonder I have been so low energy and trying to catch up on sleep….

But all in all it was a wonderful experience and I learned so much more about the company. But now, I got to quickly switch gears and get crackin on work—I’ve got quite a bit to catch up on. Enjoy your week everyone!

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