Conway, Conway, where for art thou, Conway

So here we are at the end of the Kellyville training experience (kind of a decent band name there...) and we are all preparing (and by this I mean drinking by the pool) to head out to our locations. I am basically done packing and I have taken the Canadians to Braum's (they don't have it up there) so all that's left is for me to join the merriment down at the pool. I plan to play it pretty low key because I agreed to drive one of my fellow Conway-bound interns to the airport in the morning at the early hour of 6:30 (I'm so nice), but I can't skip out entirely because somehow, in three weeks, I have become friends with these some odd 70 of us. Who'd'a thought (who'd a? who'd of? who'd-a?...whatever)?

Brief recap of Sunday, Monday and Tuesday:

All you need to know about Sunday is that Toy Story 3 changed my life. I'm normally stone faced in any movie but I was a little misty at the end of this one. I'm crazy--I've accepted it. It was just that good.

Monday was a long and boring day of learning about D&M (drilling and measurements)...we basically sat around and waited for the bus between 3 and 5... so fun. Monday night we went to The Melting Pot for birthday fondue (Anna's birthday to be exact). It was AMAZING. I've never had a dinner of multiple courses or one that was mostly fondue style. Delicious!

Tuesday was even more boring that Monday (I didn't even think that was possible)--at least in the morning. The afternoon proved more enjoyable as we got our summer projects assigned to us. My project (drum roll please) is to come up with a volume chart for a new tank in Conway. I'll basically be dusting off what calculus I retained and integrating for volume and correlating it with the depth of the substance being stored. Feel free to be impressed (or vomit...either way). I can't quite decide if I'm excited about this or not. It's totally doable and practical which I like but it does have that element of calculus (the devil's work) to it. We'll see how I feel about it in the morning and in the coming week.

Now tomorrow I head to Conway to really get down to business. As excited as I am to get to work and really apply the things I've learned (how to lift heavy things properly), I'm going to miss hanging out with all these crazy interns here in Tulsa. The good news is that I'll see a lot of them in Houston in August for wrap-up. *Sigh*

I am oriented!

What a week. Woof. We got geared up and learned all about safety procedures, protocol, and the lifestyle we are about to be submerged in. Talk about overload.

We started every day by getting on the bus at 6:30 (except that first day...) and we ended at 5(ish...) and then went to eat dinner with the recruiters. Our days basically didn't end until 9 or 1o pm. We've spent considerable amounts of time on the three shuttle buses contracted out to cart our sorry little hind-ends around and we've spent even more time listening to PowerPoint presentations about things like lifting with your legs and not your back or only driving for a maximum of 10 hours in a 24 hour period (but never between 11 pm and 5 am!).

Don't get me wrong, it's been pretty fun. Our dinners include an open bar (can you say drunk interns?) because the company culture boils down to "work hard" (SO hard) "and play harder" (no kidding). We also do have very minute times to ourselves (between shuttle bus rides) in which we can roam the mall or take a much needed nap. We have started to get to know one another (at least as much as possible between listening to talks about coveralls when there are 76 interns...) and we are "gelling" well. Seriously, I have never seen such a large group of people our age that fit together so nicely. There aren't really cliques (yet) and even when there seems to have formed a conversation group, we all are pretty comfortable joining in. It's kinda weird. I like it. I've made friends with people from Alaska, New York, California, Michigan, Tennessee, and West Virginia (to name just a few) and I've only had to endure two Dorothy jokes so far.

And then there's the SWAG (easy trigger, I mean Stuff We All Get)! I am now the proud (yes proud--I mean that) owner of two sets of blue Tyvek suits (for those of you who may not know: flame resistant coveralls in a perfectly smurf-y hue), a green hardhat (also excited about that), Red Wing boots, prescription safety goggles (they look HOT), and a sweet duffel bag to keep it all in. I have yet to don them all at once but I assure you that when I do, there will be photographic evidence. I'll probably fall in line and start referring to all of this as my PPE (personal protective equipment) as is the trend, so heads up on that one.

We are treated not so much as interns as prospective employees so they aren't sugar coating anything. This job can eat people alive. The hours are crazy (they OWN you for the first three to five years) and the work is DEMANDING (physically, mentally, emotionally...). I may spend several days on site and that means sleeping in a truck whenever I can catch a few minutes and peeing outside (no proper potty on an oil platform). As a woman I've been prepared to be treated as somewhat of an oddity and talked to as if these "roughnecks" (not people from our company but the actual work horses of an oil platform) had never seen a girl before. Should I chose to adopt this lifestyle as my career, and should I last for those first three to five years, I could be moved and placed in virtually any job, in any country in the world. I could become a sales rep, recruiter, or design engineer in France, Chad, or Venezuela. They work with you, and try to accommodate you as much as possible, but the facts are that for those first years when you are earning your keep you don't get scheduled vacation and no more than perhaps four or five days at a time. Family, if I stay with these folks, I may not see you for quite a while. It's INTENSE. The purpose of this internship program is to see if this is for me. I may very well not be. We shall see.

In the end we are geared up and oriented. We have flown back to Tulsa and we have the weekend to ourselves before we start training in Kellyville. It'll be partly classroom learning, and partly hands-on practical work. I'm kind of excited for this part.

Tomorrow I'll buy groceries, and I'll return to write more about the effects of the oil spill in the gulf. As for tonight, I'm exhausted and I'm going to bed.

Tulsa Houston Shuffle

Sunday I had the opportunity to drive approximately three hours from Wichita, KS to Tulsa, OK. Now, I know roadkill is everywhere but I feel like this drive put Oklahoma in the running for roadkill capital state. I've only ever seen a live armadillo once in my life (the funniest critter in the Omaha zoo) and even so I felt just terrible at the sight of all the mushed ones on the median. So sad. Also Bambie is now not only an orphan but he has no cousins, or aunts or uncles to speak of in Oklahoma.

Anyway... I got to Tulsa and arrived at our apartment only having been lost once. And that was not my fault. Tulsa is the road construction capital of the universe. I was a big girl and I figured it out all by myself.

I have two roommates--one from K-State and one from Georgia Tech. I also met a girl this morning from Pittsburgh PA. After much wondering about arrangements we made it to the Tulsa airport, onto our plane, and to Houston. We wandered around the Galleria (the biggest mall I've ever seen...also the poshy-est) for a while and I have decided to call it a night early. We are being picked up at 6:20 tomorrow morning... otherwise known as the @$$crack of dawn. I plan to be alive for it. Or as close as possible.