Santos Part-time work

I have continued working for Santos on a 1-2 day basis while in my last year of uni. My work has basically just continued on from the Vac work I was doing. So now the project has extended to the completion and stimulation side of things as well as drilling when it comes to Water Management in these operations (see previous blog). The work is mainly office based at this stage - hopefully down the track I can spend some decent time in the field. The few days I have been out, I really enjoyed it.

Santos Vac Work

I'm now coming to the end of my vacation work with Santos in Brisbane. The work has been really good and my project also really intersting - would recommend the company to anyone. Basically the project involved water management in coal seem gas operations in Eastern Qld. The operations include drilling, completions and stimulation (either caviation or fraccing). In all of these operations, there are large quantities of water involved, which need to be managed effectively for a number of reasons, concerning both environment and cost.

The focus for me has been on the drilling side of things. The project has quite large signifigance which has made it quite a privellage to work on. I finish mid February and have to present my project at the end (although thats pretty standard for Vac work at any company).

Vacation Work 2010/11

After deciding not to seek out Vacation work last Christmas holiday (after 2nd year uni), i thought i should do whatever i could to get work this christmas holiday (so after 3rd year uni that is) to build up my resume a bit. So i applied for Santos, a major oil and gas company, in June and got the job!

Im pretty stoked about it cause it was my first preference for Vac work. Im finding myself having a growing interest in the oil and gas industry, and as a result Iv been treasurer of the Society of Petroleum Engineers (SPE) QUT student chapter for about a year now. Through SPE, i met a couple of people who have become graduate engineers at Santos who said the company was pretty good, so yeah it all worked out pretty well.

I have signed the contract, however i havn't been told what my project will involve exactly.....hopefully find out soon.

If you are reading this and think you might be interested in the oil and gas industry (i think its starting to be more commonly referred to as the energy industry), i would recommend getting involved with SPE. Talk to as many people as possible and find out as much as you can.

Student Ambassador Day

This post is a little belated but anyway....

Last month QRC had its annual Scholarship Student Ambassador day in the QRC offices. It was good to see so many new students - this year the number of students in the program has really stepped up. The highlight for me was probably Michael Roche's opening comments regarding the GFC and its affect on the Queensland mining industry and in particular, coal. It was both interesting and extremely promising to see that the queensland coal industry has actually experienced greater exports in March this year than March last year. It seems the media hype things up a bit more than necessary and as a consequence it leads to false information being circulated. Not to say we are not facing a problem, but things are definitely sounding promising. It makes me wonder about something like global warming, where i have started to hear things such as the temperature has actually decreased in the last 10 years, contrary to the common belief that it has increased, and that the global temperature will continue to fall. I don't know what to believe anymore! It would be good to see a proper discussion about the FACTS because i feel like many organisitations, governments etc simply jump on the bandwagon and implement policies to reduce carbon emmissions etc without actually knowing for sure that there is a need to. Again, i don't know what to believe but i feel like its extremely hard to just get cold hard facts about global warming so i can make up my own mind about it. anyway.....

back to the ambassador day.....
the rest of the day was spent mainly listening to human resources people from different companies which was good - getting the inside word regarding work and resumes etc... i think i need to get my resume looking a bit nicer based on what some of the speakers had to say.

but yeah to some up, good day!

havn't blogged in a while.....

photos of New Zealand still to come.

Going to Ekka races on Wednesday - can't wait. Uni has been pretty cruisy so far, but il prob realise in a few days time that im just in denial about how much work i have lol. Anyway, not much to report on, will work on getting those photos up.

Have a good one!

Skiing Mt Hutt

I just got back from skiing Mt Hutt in New Zealand with a few mates yesterday. Overall an awesome trip! We had nice days but pretty average snow the first couple of days but it just got better and better with powder days on the last 3. I would reccomend Mt Hutt (staying in the base town of Methven) to anyone thinking about going skiing - overall it was a lot cheaper than anywhere else inculding Australia, even including flights. Pictures to come...

Study tips

Being in the middle of exams atm i thought i would share some study tips that i have thought of as useful through Senior and Uni.

First is sleep! i find i need a lot of sleep when im in the middle of exams, and that doesnt mean sleeping in - personally i dont study well at night. My brain just seems to refuse to think. so i find it best to try and get to sleep early and wake up early and study straight away (easier said then done obvisouly lol)

Second treat study as the priority, but make sure there is good balance of study/fun and maybe work too. Often mine are a little skew - the social life tends to take over a bit through the semester and then during exams i shut off a bit cause i have to cram so much work. But the best thing to do is maintain a good balance throughout. Don't let study take over (having said that dont let doing nothing take over). When your in the middle of exams have one afternoon (maybe after an exam) or even a day where you dont study at all at least once a week - you need to give your brain a rest. If your organised enough then obviously you get more free time but otherwise give yourself some.

Third, have every deadline and exam written down throughout semester/term. This way you can prioritise your study so you know what has to get done a particular week and what could wait till next week etc..

Finally is to have a study timetable during exams and coming up to exams so you can work out how much time you actually have and how much time you want to devote to each subject (this may depend on the weighting of an exam or just how behind you are lol). Once you divide it up into subjects you can divide each subject into weeks of work or whatever if you want it more detailed. i use excel so its easy to change things and you can colour code things too.

These work for me, but everyone's different.