Long Days and Nights in an Alaskan Oilfield

Every now and then, someone comes along with a job that, unless you work in that field, you’d never realize existed. And then, when you find out it exists, it’s still hard to imagine exactly what that job entails. Jack Winslow is a Petroleum Engineer, working twelve-hour shifts on an Alaskan oilfield to make sure the drilling stations keep running smoothly and safely. Remember the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico last year? Jack’s team is responsible for avoiding those kinds of disasters on the North Slope. Sound stressful? Wait until you hear the rest of it.

Growing up in rural Alaska, Jack wanted to be a writer, but only in a vague sort of way. He attended the University of Alaska, Anchorage right after high school, only to drop out immediately. He worked odd jobs for a while, then re-enrolled at Anchorage for a year before transferring to the English department at Boise State University. Jack studied English with a concentration in Technical Communication, “Because the first advisor I came across when I first got there was the head of the Technical Communication section of the English department…His take on my SAT scores (which were high in both math and verbal) was that I'd be really jazzed about his pet major, and I pretty much was - although there's not really inherently any math in it.”

Jack graduated with plans to become a technical writer, but after graduation, he and his then-wife moved back to Alaska to be near her mother, who was ill. Jack wasn’t able to find work as a tech writer – Alaska didn’t exactly have a wealth of job opportunities for English majors – he “decided to pursue basically anything else than what I went to school for.”

Jack’s experience trying to find a job in rural Alaska is similar to what many recent graduates are facing all over the nation in today’s artic economic climate. “I did all the things they always tell you to do. I applied for everything, and I also dropped off resumes to anybody I thought employed tech writers, whether they were hiring or not. I applied for graphic design jobs, any kind of document production/generation work, basically anything that had even the most tenuous connection to anything I'd studied in school. The closest I got was a job creating some kind of monthly real estate newsletter for a professional association (I was first runner up).”

After months of temporary odd jobs and anxiety, Jack got the tip that would shape his career. “My brother-in-law got a job working on the North Slope, as he had returned to Alaska at the same time we had. He told me that it paid well, although it was long hours and grueling work. It seemed to be paying about how much they told me I'd be making when I left school, so I applied.” He was accepted, unsurprisingly: “The initial job is so unpleasant that there's enough turnover that they can hire pretty much anyone who applies…For some reason, I stuck it out in that first horrible job for two and a half years.”

Jack eventually got promoted out of the difficult and dirty first-line work on the oilfield, and after about six years he was working as “what's loosely termed a Petroleum Engineer in the group that includes the supervisors of that first position I had taken - which is one of the brass rings for most of the people who stick around up there.” The hours are still long, and his life is complicated by the fact that after his first marriage ended in divorce, he met and married his current wife, who lives and works in Portland, Oregon.

Jack lives on the oil field half the time, working twelve hour shifts, seven days a week, for two weeks at a time. Then he has two weeks off to go back home to Portland. “I end up missing things because they happen to fall during the time I am at work, and it's just unrealistic to try to adjust my schedule for everything I might want to do. I can get really special occasions scheduled (I went home for my wife's college graduation) but in general, if I'm home when something happens I can go, and otherwise too bad.” Jack doesn’t have children, but he recognizes that the members of his team who do often miss important milestones. Still, the pay is good, and he gets half the year off, albeit in two-week blocks.

So what exactly does a Petroleum Engineer do for twelve hours at a stretch? In Jack’s words,“a typical work day starts at 4:30 (am or pm depending on if I am working days or nights). The guy who does my job for the other 12 hours fills me in on what happened during his shift. We then attend the first meeting of my day, with one of the other work-groups, as they often require the services of my team. That runs for about half an hour. If I'm working days, I then go to the morning meeting of our larger team. If I'm working nights, that meeting marks the end of my day. During that meeting, we start by discussing safety issues, then we quickly go over the work that was completed over the prior 24 hours and how it might impact others in the group.”

“Then breakfast, and after that I catch up with the dispatcher of my work group. I supervise pumping services, which is a collection of two-person teams who run pumps the size of tractor-trailers, which can move fluids at rates of 5 barrels per minute at pressures of 5000 psi. The rest of the day consists of coordinating the pump crews to work on our priority jobs, as given to us from our other work groups, the Operations team, and town. Our other work groups give us work that is basically in support of their jobs. Operations gives us work that supports the day-to-day operations of the wells. Town gives us work that generates more production or is used to evaluate the wells for the safety of the operation or for compliance with State and Federal regulations.”
And there are plenty of regulations. “There's a certain amount of required yearly training. Most of it is OSHA compliance stuff -- first aid/CPR, etc. I'm required to be trained in how to manifest waste that is injected in disposal wells - that's an EPA requirement. I'm required to take what's called Well Control school. It's a biannual week-long course which teaches (or reminds) the engineer how to deal with blowouts. It also covers various pressure-control equipment. There's a lot of math.”

If you’re interested in becoming a Petroleum Engineer, Jack recommends either being prepared to put in your time as a contractor and come up through the ranks or getting an engineering degree or some kind. And to really succeed, you’ll need to hone your creative problem-solving skills. “We're constantly being asked to figure out how to find and eliminate the risks before they cause an incident - which can be difficult when so many eyes have been looking at a task already, or when the tasks have been done so many times that they've become routine.”

Jack also has advice for recent grads just starting out. “If you can manage to do what you love, that's great - but the world needs a lot more fry cooks than it has people who love to do that. I'd advise working for a little while before going to school, if that's going to be a goal. I'd also recommend not settling down into a job for very long. It's probably not great for employers, but if you can shift from job to job every six months or so, I think you can get a fairly good idea of what that line of work holds for you. Try to invest a good chunk of time in something creative, whether it's got anything to do with what you want to do for a living or not. It might be writing, or painting, or music, but it might be gardening, or small engine repair, or cooking. Find something you really love to do, and spend time doing it every day if you can. If you can figure out a way to incorporate any of that in what you do for a living, you'll be miles ahead and you'll get a lot more out of your work.”

You Shoot Like A Girl: Interview with a Frag Doll

Can you imagine getting paid to play video games? I’m not talking about a job where gaming is considered “research” for the work you eventually produce, like play-testing, games journalism, or (potentially NSFW) working for the ESRB. I’m talking about a job where your main responsibility is to be awesome at video games. That’s what the women of Ubisoft’s Frag Dolls do, and I was able to talk to three of the Dolls via e-mail to learn a little bit more about how they became professional gamers and why it’s the perfect job for them.

According to the official Frag Dolls web site, “The Frag Dolls are a team of professional female gamers recruited by Ubisoft to promote their video games and represent the presence of women in the game industry.” This means that they compete in tournaments, attend gaming conventions and industry events, and advocate for women in the gaming industry through public appearances, blogs, and social networking. In other words, they live and breathe video games. Can you imagine anything better?

There are currently nine Dolls on the team, and since their debut in 2004 (in which they won by shut-out at the Rainbow Six: Black Arrow tournament), competition for any vacancies that arise has been fierce. I received replies from Ann-Marie Wilson, Krystal Herring, and Lanai Gara, also known as Spectra, Siren, and Fidget, respectively. Of course, nobody is born a Frag Doll – and Siren noted that “As a team of 8, every girl has different backgrounds and education.” Spectra has a communications degree and worked in the film industry and as a flight attendant before she answered a casting call to be a Frag Doll in 2009. Siren worked as a professional makeup artist, doing makeup for runway shows, weddings, photo shoots, and retail. Others have backgrounds in fields as divers as art, computing, psychology, and human resources.

So what does a Frag Doll do in a day? Spectra replied, “currently I spend most of my days working from home on my computer. I have a number of projects to work on for our website and social media outlets. On certain days of the week I have gaming events I need to be online for, I have conference calls and other administrative jobs to do for our team.” Fidget’s schedule is similar. “Normally I wake up, get onto the laptop, do emails, update our social networks, play video games whenever we have community game nights or Frag Doll Fridays and work on videos that are coming up.” All the Dolls write blogs and participate in community events, and they travel all over the country to compete and participate in conventions as needed.

Being a Frag Doll sounds like a full-time job, but many of the Dolls have other responsibilities on top of their team duties. Fidget balances her work with being a mom; Morgan Romine, the team captain, is a full-time graduate student. Faith Harrison’s official profile reveals that she juggles a job as a computer technician, working for the Dolls, studying for her bachelor’s in Computer Science, and being a mom to her four-year-old son.

The Dolls all have two things in common: they all started gaming at a young age, and they all love their work. But it’s not without drawbacks. I asked everyone what the worst part of their jobs were, and Spectra gave this surprising response: “Not having enough time to play video games. I would love to spend all day playing one game. Being able to spend my time to master it and be the best. Before I got this job I would have long stretches of time off devoted to gaming. Now I have to schedule my game time. It’s hard to be really good at any one game. I have to play a lot of different games and I never have the time needed to reach the level of skill I feel like others expect from me. It can be frustrating.”

How do you become a Frag Doll? When the group began, Ubisoft issued a casting call and women gamers from all over the country competed for eight slots. Now, however, there is a Cadettes program, sort of a professional gaming internship for women. As current Dolls “retire,” their replacements will be drawn from the available pool of Cadettes. This is how Siren was hired; she played with Pandora’s Mighty Soldiers, an all-female group of non-professional competitive gamers, then was accepted into the Cadettes for a while before being hired as a full-on Frag Doll. Her advice? “Learn as much as you can from anyone willing to teach you, be persistent and

make great contacts.” And Spectra noted that while “being a Frag Doll is a great position for any dedicated female gamer looking to get into professional gaming or wanting a career in the game industry. But it isn’t the only way. There are lots of opportunities out there…the really talented and motivated will create their own opportunities.”

Fidget offers similar advice to anyone pursuing a new career: “- Be determined and never give up, no matter what people tell you.” Additionally, she believes in going for a career you want to be in for the long haul. “Do something you enjoy and can see yourself doing 20 years later in. Don't do something just for the money.” And Spectra offered this encouragement: “think about what you are good at, what you enjoy doing, and find a job that lets you do that. You would be surprised what you can make a living doing.”

This article would have been impossible without the help of Morgan Romine (AKA Rhoulette), who distributed the questionnaire among the team and endured my ceaseless nagging. For more information on the Frag Dolls and to see when they may be coming to a city near you, check out their web site at www.fragdolls.com. Image courtesy of Ubisoft.