The Adventures of Being a 'Real Person'

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!