The Life of a Co-op Student

This is my final semester at Iron Range Engineering, but this semester, I am experiencing something even more bizarre than a traditional university and IRE. I am co-oping with Essar Steel Project Management Company Ltd. as a Automation Engineering Intern.

It has only been a week, but I feel alienated from IRE. My only way to communicate with IRE is through the blogs we have and emails. This bestows much larger responsibilities on a student. It requires the student to be willing to do school work after a full day at the office; but you can't stop there! This first weekend (and I'm assuming the next 15) was almost entirely consumed by school work. This must be kept under control for the entire semester to avoid cramming and sleepless nights towards the semester's end.

My project for the semester is linked with my work at the office which will be the automation for the pellet plant. Automation is the computerized version of a running plant. It displays how full a tank is, open and closed valves, and much more. The point to having automation is so that most of the plant can be controlled remotely from a control room, and so that when something goes wrong, it can be fixed or shutdown before it gets out of hand. For example, if a tank is getting too full (75%) a warning alarm will go off to inform the control room technician that some action might need to be taken to fix this issue. If the issue is not fixed and the tank gets to 90%, an emergency switch is activated by the automation program, shutting off the pumps that are adding fluids to the tank so that no overflow occurs.

The co-op is a great experience that I recommend to every student that is willing to take on a larger workload for a semester. It isn't for everyone, but we all knew engineering wasn't going to be easy. I like a challenge, and I have to think I'm not the only one. On top of my job and my work, I have the FE test this April and a wedding in the summer. Did I mention I'm house hunting too? oh yea, I also organize and attend multiple sports/community outreach events each week. Doing all this, I still manage to get 6 hours of sleep each night, usually. The word boredom has been erased from my vocabulary for the next 4 months.

I have altered the analogy of the Little Engine that Could, into the Little Engineer that Will. Itasca Community College Engineering and Iron Range Engineering have taught me everything I need to be successful. I know that I can do all these things because over the years it has become routine. These programs are set up to push each student to their limits. It has done the best job possible of preparing me for a real career. These skills I have would be under-developed or even nonexistent if I would've attended a regular university. I know I made the right choice coming to Iron Range Engineering!