White men

I think about race and sex here probably more than I ever have before. It would make for a more salacious story if I told you that I'm mistreated, that I'm the victim of racial slurs and unwanted spanks on the ass, but that's not true. All of the men on this rig have been very polite and nice, and while they make the occasional woman-joke about me, it's said playfully.

No one's ever made a racial comment to me or around me. No one has mentioned race period. I wonder sometimes what they think of me. I wonder if any of them are closet racists. I wonder if they can even tell I'm half black, and if they would be as nice if I were dark-skinned.

I have my own prejudices. I assume that if you're a white man from the south with little education and you watch FOX News...you're probably a racist. Not Hitler-racist, but don't-date-my-daughter-racist. When I was in college my friends and I would watch FOX News on occasion out of boredom to see what the other side was saying. We would laugh about Glenn Beck's paranoid rants, or listen to Rush Limbaugh on the radio and get angry, coming up with counter-arguments as if he were there. We would worry that those men were instilling fear and hatred of a changing world in people that didn't know any better.

Everyone here, all these nice people, they watch FOX News exclusively to find out about the world. I don't think I had ever met anyone that did that before. I pretend I have no opinion when I walk by a co-worker listening to Glenn Beck talk about the Obama Administration's link to the Black Panthers. I don't say anything. But I do worry, what do they think of me?

I know I shouldn't assume that these men are racist based on where they come from or which talking heads they listen to. I've never been one to assume racism when someone was rude to me or I didn't get my way, but that was in Montgomery County, Maryland - probably one of the most liberal and diverse places in the country. Now, I'm surrounded by Republican white men. And I'm out of my element.

What I Do

I would have to guess that almost none of my family members or friends have any idea on what my job entails, so for them and you, this is a post about what I do.

Actually, first let me clarify that despite what my extended family may think, I actually do work on oil rigs on a daily basis. I do not work in an office. Here's proof:

I wake up every day at 4:45pm. I shower, I eat cereal, I drink coffee and I go to the "morning" safety meeting. There are about a dozen people in the meetings. I'm the only one not chewing tobacco. I'm one of the few people without a visible tattoo. I'm also the only girl. At least one joke is made at my expense. I smile. The joke is either something about being a Yankee or a girl, but I don't mind as it's always good-natured.

At 6pm, my shift starts and on a normal day, my responsibilities are to monitor data coming from our equipment down-hole to our computers on the surface. Around once an hour I email datasets and logs to the client. The client is a company such as Exxon, Shell or a smaller company such as Southwestern Energy. If things are going well, I can stream TV online between datasets. If things are going badly (equipment failures, transmission issues), I am likely close to tears and fantasizing about driving off into the sunset, leaving whoever is still here to fix the problem themselves.

The busiest days -- those days when I don't get to sleep and I must stay up for as long as the job warrants -- are when we are preparing our equipment to be lowered into the hole. There is much paperwork to be done, and we have to place various sensors around the rig. It gets dirty. I took the picture above after a particularly messy task of climbing on the Blow-Out Preventer (BOP) to remove a cable.

We work in 12-hour shifts, which go by much more quickly than any of my 8-hour-day office jobs. Because things are either going to shit and you're racing against the clock to fix something, or you're doing nothing and get to watch Mad Men season 1, which is what I am doing now.

During my 12 hours off, I sleep. The whole time. There isn't really anywhere to go because we're in rural Arkansas. Most people like to leave the rig every few days, but my short time working offshore has prepared me to be isolated from the world for up to three weeks, so being on this rig for a week without leaving is easy.

Usually it takes about a week to drill a well. If they are drilling more than one well at a location they'll skid the rig over a bit. This usually means a day off before we're needed again. If they are done drilling all the wells at one location, they'll move the rig to the new location. This gives us about 3-4 days off. Right now we're doing a 2 weeks on, one week off rotation. (They've only been able to do that in Arkansas since all of us offshore people were relocated here. Before that, there weren't enough engineers in Conway for anyone to get substantial time off.)

For now, I'd say my life is going pretty well. Sure, I'm a 7-hour drive away from all of my possessions and I'm even further from anyone I love or who loves me. But right now our equipment is working, I'm relaxing, and nothing needs fixing. Things are going well.

First post

Picture: nail polish and grease

It's weird writing the first post of a blog no one knows exists yet. Who am I talking to? I'd pretend that this is my diary, but then I would start writing as if you know me. You don't know me.

My name is Rachel. (See, if you were my diary you'd already know that) I grew up in Maryland and later went to an ivy league school where I majored in geological engineering. I graduated in 2009 and began working in October for a large oilfield services company. I am currently on an oil rig.

I lived in Lafayette, Louisiana and worked on offshore rigs until very recently. I was working offshore 60 miles away from the Horizon when it exploded. After the ban on offshore drilling, I was relocated temporarily(?) to work on land rigs in Conway, Arkansas where I am now and have been for the past month and a half.

I enjoy writing so I was encouraged by more than a few people to start this blog. I haven't told anyone about it yet, mainly because I haven't decided what kind of blog this is going to be. I don't know what people will find interesting. But I guess most people don't know someone that works on an oil rig, so I've got that going for me.

This is going to be a blog about a lot of things, like adjusting to life in the South, starting a new job, and being the only girl on a rig full of men. I hope I can talk about some important stuff, like the oil industry and the people in it. But to be honest, I'm probably going to talk a lot about some of my less intellectual interests, which includes an embarrassing amount of reality TV. Just a heads up.