My experience

Overview

Each day to day was different. In my role, they began the summer having me shadow other engineers to learn. Eventually, they essentially let me work as if I were a full-time mechanical engineer just with MUCH less responsibility. In the refinery environment, each day has a new set of goals to accomplish. We had our projects that we knew we would need to work on during the day, but consistently there would be something happening in the plant that would take us away from our desks. I personally enjoyed this very much as it made each day have its own change of pace. ||My main project for the summer was analyzing the radiant tubing in all the refinery heaters. I was looking for predicted lifespan before needing to replace them due to different failure mechanisms (i.e. creep, corrosion, etc). I also spent time on a few smaller projects on heat exchangers and torque specs for flanges for example. Among these, the main project was the most interesting. ||Outside of my main projects, my mentor spent a lot of the summer taking my on refinery plant trips with him to show me the ropes. As the summer progressed and I learned more, he began having me help him with some of the team's workload on top of my main projects. ||Worst part of the summer by far was the first week. We spent the whole time doing computer based safety training. Its a necessary part of the job considering the potential that untrained people can put others at risk. Once this week concluded, the summer was a great learning opportunity.

Hair drug testing 30 days before start date as well as potential random hair tests during the summer (never saw anyone random tested however). If you want to have the devil's lettuce, understand they will fire you immediately if you get caught.