Today marks the end of my fourth week working at BASF and I will tell
you, it has been an absolutely insane month. But as I tuck my first
month of work experience under my belt I think it's a good time to
relfect and share some of my experiences with somebody other than my
loving husband.
The Geismar site is absolutely amazing! I wish I
could post a lot of pictures of it but sadly, it is very illegal to do
so. BUT I will post a picture of my desk area (I took care that nothing
confidential is in the shot) and maybe I'll bring all my gear home one
day and have Joshua take a picture of me all suited up. Anyways, the
front third of the site after you pass the main Admin building up front
and clear the security check point is a nature reserve. We have about
8-10 families of deer that live on our property and I love driving
passed them into and out of the plant. When I started, the babies had
just been born so there were adorable little fawns running around
everywhere! Some of the males have begun to grow huge antlers and now I
am afraid that I am going to pull a Rory Gilmore and get hit by a deer
on the way to work. Unfortunately, you are not allowed to honk, take
pictures, or sneak one of the baby deer home with you after work. Doing
any of those things will get you swiftly escort off the premises. But if
we ever have a full site evacuation I am totally grabbing one of the
babies to save.
The second two thirds of the site house
multiple plants that make various products. I am a process engineer for
the KU unit. That means that I don't work at a particular plant but
instead we service a number of plants. So when somebody wants to install
a new piece of equipment and needs those calculations, they call us.
When somebody is having trouble with a piece of equipment, they call us.
When the site needs safety audits of various equipment, they call us.
We service the following plants: TDI1 and TDI2 (TDI is a soft plastic
used in mattresses and foam) MDI1 and MDI2 (MDI is a hard plastic used
in cars) polyol, aniline, and DNT (I am less sure of what they are used
for because I have mostly worked in TDI and MDI thus far). So we are all
over the place.
Now when I say 'we' and 'us' I am referring to
myself and the three other process engineers that I work with. The first
is a guy named Win Wallace, my mentor. He has worked at BASF for over
30 years and is probably one of the best process engineers that you will
ever meet. He actually went to Germany and desgined the TDI plant
before they built it, so TDI is his baby. Win is also an incredibly nice
and genuine guy who I really enjoy working with. Daniel Doody (yes,
that is his real last name) has been at BASF for 5 years and worked a
few other places before. He is also a really talented process engineer
but is super chill and laid back. He's probably the process guy I spend
the most time with because I have been helping out with a few projects
he's on. The last process engineer is Fabian Mbagwu. He seems very nice
and will eventually help me get started on validating an ASPEN
simulation of the entire Aniline plant.
Those are the process
guys, but my office is located around a bunch of project managers that
I've had the extreme pleasure of getting to know. There are four project
managers in my building: Henry, David, Suhail, and Mike. David is my
next door neighbor and Henry is across the hall so we talk a good bit.
David is a really sweet guy and Henry is just outrageous. He always has a
story for everything and is super outgoing and helpful. These two guys
have really gone a long way to making me feel at home and welcome.
Speaking of my office (which is located near the TDI plants), here is that promised picture:
I
have a white board, a poster calendar, and couple of chairs for my
visitors too that aren't in this picture. Oh, and a filing cabinet and a
window (the window is behind me as I took this picture). But this is
where I sit when I'm not in somebody else's office, a meeting, a
training session, or out in the field. I am really grateful to have an
office. It's not much, but it's so nice to be able to shut the door if I
want to or open it and invite others into my space.
Like I said
before, though, it's been a crazy month for me. I adjust slowly to
change and leaving the safety of the 'student' title and entering
corporate America is no exception. The whole month my work load swung
back in forth between being virtually non-existent to super
overwhelming. There were some days that I would come home and excitedly
tell Joshua about all the things that happened and how much I love work
and some days I would come home crying about how I could never be smart
enough to be a process engineer and how much I miss home. I guess that's
the life of a feeler.
Yesterday, though, I met with Win and my
boss (Bruce Babb) and we put together my assignment goals, their
deadlines, and how each goal would be weighted in my final review. I
cannot even begin to tell you the peace that this list brings to my
heart. I am a goal-oriented person to the max. It helps me to feel like
I'm no longer floating around aimlessly but I have something I'm working
towards. I know what I'm doing and where I'm going. As this month
closes I finally feel like I'm finding my stride. It's funny, but I told
Joshua that whenever we move again that I'll probably be crying to go
back to Louisiana and that I would miss our church, Win, Bruce, Daniel,
David, Henry and everything that I am struggling to adjust to right now.
But I guess it's just the way I am. I am so grateful for Joshua though.
He has been steady throughout our whole adjustment. Thank goodness out
transition into marriage was wonderfully natural and simple because I
dont know if I could have taken two tough adjustments at once!
