Welcome to Schlumberger

When I originally interviewed with Schlumberger I thought I was interviewing for an internship position. However, they tend to not give out internships till the summer before the year of graduation. Since I am not graduating for awhile they gave me a spot in their Field Camp instead.

The Field Camp is a week long camp where you can get a taste of the job in a real setting and from people with experience. In the oil and gas industry the work is hard, the hours are long, its dirty, you are outside in the elements, plus many more challenges that make it very different from the "average job."  Not everyone is up for a job with those elements, and because of that Schlumberger has a 20% or lower retention rate of new employees that head straight into the field. Ya, it is that challenging. So in order to help people see if they might like it before the company invests a lot of money in training, they started the week long Field Camp.

It was one of the most amazing experiences I have ever encountered. The week long trip was paid for including our plane tickets. The "camp" was hosted at the Schlumberger training site in Kellyville and we stayed at the Schlumberger housing site in Tulsa. This company is huge and very nice to their employees from what I could tell. They owned an entire apartment complex and ran it somewhat like a hotel but with more features. There was 19 of use, 10 girls and 9 guys (more girls than guys - very surprising for engineering) We were from schools from all over the US and Canada. There was a few people from MSU, and a few from Ohio State, but majority of everyone else was the only one from their specific school.

Every morning we were on the bus at 6 am and taken out to the training site. UTH (up the hill) had classrooms and training rooms and DTH (down the hill) had a fully functional rig site set-up, cementing and fracturing operation, wireline, mud-engineering, etc. (For those of you not familiar with oil, it was an area with plenty of opportunity to get hands on and very dirty). Yes, they really called it Up-The-Hill and Down-The-Hill.

All day long we had training on different topics that we had to later present on at the end of the week (If you have any controversial questions about Fracturing or Oil I can answer them - I know it all (kidding but I do know a lot)). Therefore, you had to pay attention no matter how tired you were. Every bus ride, to anywhere, almost everyone was asleep. After training all day, we would come back, have an hour of free time and then have to work on our presentations and complete team building challenges. On that Friday we presented on our topics, and were thoroughly questioned by the field engineers on the material. It was the hardest presentation I have ever given and some of the hardest questions I have ever been asked on the spot.

I loved the people I met and I ended up making some great friends. As for the job ....I think I want to be a field engineer. Why? well...

You are only a field engineer for about 3-5 years
The job is a challenge which I am always drawn to
You move or change location about every 1-2 years
The job is hands on
No desk
No business causal (Blue FR's all day, everyday)
I can live almost anywhere in the world
Money (I have ....too large of loans and I would be able to pay them off very fast)
And after I finish my 5 years I can stay with Schlumberger and go pretty much anywhere or I can go to any other industry.

For right now, my hope is that I get an internship with them, work for them out of school for 5 years ish, and then later on I can always go back to Bio-medical or any other industry that might peak my interest at the time. I still love Bio-medical and am planning on working in the industry but in the meantime, I think I found a slight detour.