Occupation: Mudlogger
Age: 30
I graduated with a degree in Chemistry, and my professor told me about a company here called Neset Consulting that hires interns to do mudlogging. I had no idea what mudlogging was -- I had to Google it. But it's basically taking rock samples every 30 feet as oil companies drill vertically, then curve and then drill horizontally.
The internship was for the summer, so I started in June. But they needed people, so I stayed on full-time. I've made almost $14,000 in six weeks, and I'm expecting about $60,000 to $70,000 this year.
We often sleep in a trailer about 100 feet away from the derrick [a device used to lift equipment on oil rigs]. We have a two-person geology crew, and I do the night shift, so I work from 4 p.m. to 4 a.m. -- and lately it's been until 5 a.m. We share a bedroom, bathroom, small kitchen and small living area, and then we have one trailer as a geology lab for work. So it can be pretty tight quarters.
I'm a science person, so I kind of thought I would be in a lab somewhere maybe analyzing samples. But I never thought I would be in a hard hat, wearing fire retardant clothing, climbing up on a drill rig.
But it's fun! Girls like to play with rocks, too.
Surprisingly, there are lots of women in my field. My company's owner, Kathy Neset, is a woman pioneer in the oil industry. She knows women can do this kind of job, so she hires lots of women.
But I see my husband very minimally -- we've had maybe two, three or four days off together in a six-week period. He works in the oilfield too, as a truck driver, and we have completely opposite hours.
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