Monday, January 4, 2010

Day 1. Girls?!

So today was the first day of my coop work term at Canfor Pulp and Paper Limited. Their research lab is housed in the Paprican, near Triumf and the other research centres at UBC. It's a really nice building in itself, very quiet with not that many people. I think my boss, Patricia McBeath, told me that there are 9 full time employees in the company, and that's all. The day started off sorta lame, cause the bus driver decided that he would just skip all the stops along marine dr, meaning he didn't stop at wesbrook for me to get off. So I had to walk in the rain from hampton place all the way down to 3800 Wesbrook mall. The entire morning started off with filling out company forms such as waivers, non-disclousure agreements, tax forms, and it went on. It was during this time that I also met two of my other co-workers, Anika and Stephanie. Both are chemical engineers, and in their 3rd year, which made me the only male, and in 2nd year. Workplace safety videos and hazards videos were watched, learning about how not to be stupid and stick your hand into a machine that is still operating. The entire building itself doesn't have that many people, so it's unusually quiet and there isn't that many people around. In the afternoon, the real training began and I spent the afternoon learning how to use the different machines to test paper. Basically its sitting in a room with 8 or so machines that test the different properties of the paper. The tests are all pretty interesting, but i guess they are tiring, and it's just doing the same thing over and over again. Calibrate machine, insert test sample, press button, record, repeat. But it was a great day at work, and having all my co-workers be female is a sure change from all the males in engineering.

3 comments:

British Columbia Scams and flimflam said...

Canfor are the biggest crooks I have ever dealt with.

Justin Chang said...

That sounds like an ideal job for me actually. And it really doesn't sound like it has much to do with your program.

Billy said...

What did canfor do? I just work in the research and development part, so i have no idea