Co-Op with Shaw Industries
This past spring and summer, I have been fortunate enough to participate in the Co-Op program at Shaw Industries at Plant 8S in Columbia, SC. For the past 7 months, I’ve dubbed myself the luckiest girl alive in that I get to make carpet fibers 5 days a week.
Yes, you read that right. I am a self-proclaimed Polymer Princess. My job is amazing and Shaw has helped me develop professionally, intellectually, and personally beyond my expectations.
As a Chemical Engineering student, I’ve become accustomed to living in a constant state of confused vagueness. “I think that one thing makes this thing spin and something happens inside that vessel and it gets really hot and carpet pops out.” Not to say none of us know what’s going on, but I think an engrained sense of self-conscious panic ensues when we are asked to go from our academic setting to a real world setting and expected to apply our classroom concepts. Nothing is shiny, nothing is theoretical and no one has any idea where all that entropy is coming from.
Shaw took that bundle of madness and turned my brain into that of a self-sufficient, answer-seeking, confident, humble engineering student. I’ve learned that engineers in the industry don’t all know all the answers; they were hired to be able to figure them out and employers/senior engineers are happy to help you through the learning process. I’ve learned to think before I ask a question; if I can figure out most of the answer myself, people are more likely to help me to the finish line because I’ve shown invested interest in solving the problem.
I’ve learned to work with people who do not have the same amount of formal education as I’ve been lucky to experience, but know far more than I could ever hope to learn sitting behind a book in a classroom. I’ve learned that humility and sincere curiosity will teach me more than trying to remember exactly what that one textbook said.
I’ve learned that while professionalism and intellectual competency is very important, the ability to communicate and relate to coworkers on a more personal level is more important. I’ve learned that while it feels great to figure out the answer independently, it feels even better to be asked to be part of a team to contribute to a collaborative problem-solving effort.
Our degrees will get us 60% of the way in our careers; our ability to ask for help and work cohesively with a large network of people will get us to our thrones as Polymer Princes and Princesses.
My tasks at Shaw have been similar to what you’ve read countless times in previous entries. I do engineering work and manage projects and crunch numbers. Sometimes I go home covered in grease and sometimes I’m bored at work, drowning in Excel. But Shaw Industries has made me a more confident student and coworker, outside of my day-to-day tasks, and I highly recommend pursuing an opportunity with them if given the chance.