Summer Internship in Mathura – IOCL – making the most of opportunities
About Author: Shubhi Vashishtha, a B.Tech (Chemical Engineering) student from Banasthali University interned with Indian Oil Corporation Limited in Mathura Refinery. She shares her interesting internship experience with us.
When we hear the word ‘Internship’ the first image which flickers into our mind is the joy and freedom of being away from the class and into the cool, actual field experience with all the perks of the work culture, hanging out with colleagues, freedom to apply our own minds and not cramming and vomiting out of the text books as is required by our education system. Well, not all are lucky enough to achieve this dream, but then, some actually do. This being my second internship, after the one I did in Delhi Jal Board, I somewhat knew what to expect of a government system, but what blew me away was the sheer magnitude of the whole setup.
The Day I entered the refinery my first thought was ‘ Oh Crap! How am I gonna do this in 30 days?’ The only way it seemed possible to cover the whole production setup of IOCL’s famed Mathura Refinery was to swing about like Tarzan from one unit to another:). This thought escalated to the form of a panic attack when even after our first week we were sitting ducks in the conference room of the refinery since we were yet to be allotted our hard hats and needed to get ourselves some safety shoes (which turned out to weigh literally a ton on our feet!). The initiation of our internship was a fire and safety drill, we met a young engineer who told us all the perks of being an IOCL employee and all the great places to visit while on the job, the hotspots of the nearby areas, he gave us a brief up of the various protocols to be followed and “either do your job diligently or just enjoy and get your certificates and get the hell out” speech, which is remembered quite fondly till this day.
When we did finally get to peek inside the production area ( minus our cell phones as they were not allowed inside the battery limits- the only downside of the trip), we were astounded to see that we had more than 21 units to cover in the 21 days that we had left with us. Since it was our once in a life time opportunity to explore the legendary refinery, rather than sticking to one unit and wondering about the rest, we gave a shot at covering all the units by going to each unit control panel and interacting about the system with the shift engineer in charge and then coercing them into giving us a field trip of the unit. We learnt a whole lot about the whole oil production system and the actual process of it on site was just awesome. We rated the engineers on the scale of 6 to 10 for all the information they gave us and some of them were so damn good that we were praying to god to swap them with our professors anytime :P .
Well, although it’s a tough feat to ask some one to travel a whole hour in the sweltering temperature of the Indian June afternoon to come for internship, it paid out to be more than worth it; with us learning and gaining an experience which will be pretty unforgettable. So, all you interns out there (or to be interns) don’t wallow in what you don’t have but be happy with what you got and make the best of it because what you learn from an experience and what you don’t is always in your hands.
If Shubhi‘s internship experience motivates you, you may look for the latest internships on Internshala and give an early start to your career.
You may want to check latest internship in Delhi.
