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.

Semester almost over

Uni is getting extremely busy with only 3 weeks until my first exam. I've managed to slip behind a little because of other commitments but i'm sure il get through. And once exams are over i am going to New Zealand to ski Mt Hutt with a few mates. It's only for a week but i can't wait. Back to the study!

New Leader's Conference

On wednesday and Thursday i attended the AusIMM New Leader's Conference in Brisbane. The conference had some pretty interesting speakers, for me especially on the Thursday when David Archibald and M. Roberts both gave presentations disproving global warming as a result of CO2 emissions. According to each of them, temperature in the last decade has actually dropped, and will continue to drop based on a correlation between the Sun's solar cycles and temperature. David Archibald also suggested that the affect of CO2 in the atmosphere and temperature increase has a logarithmic relationship - meaning that even if we were to burn all the fossil fuels available on Earth, only a minuscule temperature increase would result.

Both presentations were quite convincing. I have always been skeptical about global warming and felt as though anything i have ever read on the topic never gives any solid proof of it. However these presentations seemed to give solid proof that in fact the Earth will experience cooling in the near future. The implications of this are pretty scary with the Emissions trading scheme looming - if it came into practice it could potentially unnessarily wipeout a large portion of the coal industry, a significant part of the Australian economy. I am interested to read some more articles about climate change now that i have heard a bit of the other side of the story. I guess i am still sitting on the fence, but i think i have definitely been sauded against the global warming theory.

Aside from that, the conference gave a good insight into what its like to work as a young engineer, and some of the problems and challenges my genreation will face in the future, and would reccomend attendance to anyone next year. Just become a member of AusIMM (it only costs 11 bucks a year for a student) and you should gain some access to things like this.

Have a good one

Uni - Week 7

So its week 7 of uni for semester 1, for my second year of uni. Im finding the workload pretty good at the moment really - not that im looking for more lol but its not too bad at the moment. Some of my subjects im not liking much - but im sure its ganna get better next semester. One subject i dont usually like that much i have to build a DC motor for, which is pretty cool since it gets ya away from the books for a while.

For now, im ganna try make the most of the easter break. Have a good one!

Dirt Game

Coming up on ABC is a series called Dirt Game - a drama based around mining. I have no idea what it will end being like but it will be interesting to see if its any good. The idea sounds kinda cool. I watched the preview but its hard to tell if it will be good just from that - just have to wait and see. If anyone's interested this is the link to the preview:

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/comingsoon.htm#?vid=video1

Contrary to most people's belief, i reckon ABC has some pretty good shows actually. Spicks and Specks and The Gruen transfer are worth a watch to any of you ABC-avoiders lol and that thing on the history of Australian surfing was good to
Have a good one

Thoughts on financial crisis

Basically, i'm not worried! The global financial crisis might make it a bit harder to find Vac work this year, but in my opinion, thats it. Markets go up, and they go down. In the last decade we have seen considerable growth in the share market, so they were bound to go down at some point. And hopefully by the time i graduate everything will be back in order.

So for now, i'm taking confidence in the fact that there is still a high demand for engineering and resources, even with the financial crisis. I'm just using the oppurtunity to get into the share market while everything's so undervalued. See if my investments pan out like i hope......

So here are some pics of the Yarraman site (where i worked) at CRL, as i mentioned i would upload in my previous post.

Another thing to add about CRL is that its parent company, Iluka, has recently donated $50 000 to the Victorian bushfire appeal. I believe this a good representation of CRL's commitment to the community around it. On top of that, CRL is commited to the environmental management and rehabilitation of North Straddie, which i also value, being a frequent visitor of Straddie.

Anyway, Uni is starting this week, which although i would probably rather me working in a mine, it should be good this year now that my subjects are getting more specific and more related to mechanical engineering. So stay posted, i will blog again soon.

Vac Work Finished

Hi all,

I have now come to the end of my Vac work experience with CRL, and now i'm back to uni this week. I thought id just go over some of the benefits i have found with doing vacation work in general as a 1st year, and with CRL specifically.

With 1st year engineering being so general, after studying a year of mechanical engineering its fair to say i know very little about mechanical engineering! With that in mind, vacation work as a 1st year is a good chance to get a proper taste for the mining and resources industry, which I think differs to vacation work as a 3rd year student for instance where the experience is more about actually practicing as an engineer. For that reason it is a big investment for a company to employ a first year, seeing as their technical knowledge is limited.

However this does not mean a 1st year can't have an extremely worthwhile experience as a Vac student. My experience has been fairly hands on, which i think is beneficial to anyone pursuing a career in engineering. I feel as though there is a lot to learn outside the classroom, and can only be learned actually on the tools. For me, learning from a practical point of view is not only more insightful, but a lot more interesting too! For instance, before i undertook Vac work with CRL, i had only a vague idea of how a pump worked. But at work i got to take them apart and see inside them, as well as actually stand inside one (pictures to come...)!

So overall I would recommend to any first year to try to find Vac work - for me it has been an excellent experience. Working at CRL specicifically, i was able to work in a few different areas around the mine. This gave me a taste for more than one area, which now means that i can walk away reassured that the mechanical field is where i want to be. It also gave me a good oversight into how a sand mine, and a mine in general, operates. From what i have seen in my 3 months working for CRL, i would definitely consider sand mining as a career. As i said though, Vac work is a good experience, and i would recommend CRL specifically for vac work.

It wasn't all hard work though! I had some holiday as well, where i was just hanging out with mates, surfing and going out. I will post photos in the next few days hopefully - as soon as i get them on my computer..... stay posted.