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I work for an oil company, and have been here almost 30 years. Currently, I act as the project manager and I manage teams that tackle multi-million dollar projects in engineering, procurement and construction in the petrochemical industry.

I have stayed with the same job for almost 30 years because of the diversity in the different projects and people from around the world that I get the opportunity to work with. The diversity makes no two projects alike in the sense that I am dealing with a different customer with different customer requirements, but yet, I essentially build the same thing.

Some of the responsibilities that I have as a project manager are that I have to manage a project team to ensure that everyone gets their work done on time. I also have to make sure that the project comes in under budget and that I deliver a quality product. I'm the one responsible for the entire team. I also run weekly meetings for the whole team, organize project schedules, issue monthly reports to the customer that describe the project progress; I act as the primary contact between our company and the customer.

Some of the special accommodations that I oversee are in planning. When my team has to travel, I make sure they have quality flights, or seats on the plane, and also their hotel rooms. When we have dinner with clients, I pay for it. Basically, I make sure that everyone is safe and happy. I also plan meetings with the customer, detailed engineering company meetings. I also plan meetings with the structural steel fabricator that manufactures the frame that houses all of the equipment I buy. There are three parts to the type of projects that I deal with: the engineering phase, the procurement phase and the fabrication phase. The detailed engineering phase is with a company primarily in Korea, the procurement phase of the project is when they write requisitions to buy equipment and the fabrication phase is a company in the U.A.E. (United Arab Emirates).

Before I became interested in engineering, I was specifically interested in architecture. This began while I was in high school. I took shop classes, and we had a small group of people that just loved architecture. When I graduated high school, my parents could not afford to send me to an expensive college to study architecture, so I went to Harper College for a two-year degree in architecture, and I hoped to transfer to a four-year college after that. But, after I earned my two-year degree in architecture, I found it difficult to get a job in that field, so I switched over to engineering. My specialty was structural engineering, because it was so similar to architecture. Then I began working here doing drafting while going to school part-time at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT). On that part-time basis, it took me about eight years to finally get my degree in civil engineering.

I was able to earn my second degree because the company paid for my education 100 percent. So when I graduated, I did not owe anything. That's why I did it on a part-time basis. It was very difficult because I had to manage working, going to school and finding some time to relax once in awhile.

I began working here because my father was an employee, so I already knew about the company. It is a good company, and I was able to earn good money, and it also had good benefits. The best benefit at the time was that they paid for my education.

After I received my degree in engineering, I moved from drafting to the engineering department of the company. There were many more opportunities to advance within the department, and I got paid more.

My company definitely wanted me to work here after I completed my engineering degree, but I was free to go work at any other company that I wanted to. I did not have any other obligations here. I actually had another offer at a different company, but it was a nuclear power company. I decided that I wanted to stay with the same industry so I didn't have to start all over and learn a whole new industry.

Grades were a very big deal during my college career. When engineering students graduate, it is very competitive. You have to have a good GPA to get a good job. When most companies hire engineers, they only hire people with the highest GPAs. I got almost all As and Bs. Except in differential equationsthat was a different story.

A typical day begins when I come into the office. I check my E-mail and I accept meeting invites from other people in my company that want to schedule meetings for that specific day. Then I go and talk to the project team people to see if anyone has question or problem areas so that I can resolve those. I also answer emails from team members and customers. I work an average of nine hours beginning around 7:00 a.m. and I stay until around 5:00 p.m. In our department, we have about five other project managers besides myself; our department acts as an EPC (engineering procurement and construction) contactor.

In another country a typical day would be to commute to the detail engineer and have meetings with their project team to make sure the work is proceeding smoothly. Then the team would go to the customer's refinery. Approximately 90 percent of all the work we do is international work. In the actual refinery, we visit an actual operating unit. To do this, we have to wear certain safety equipment to protect ourselves. I have a contractor license that certifies me to go into an oil refinery as a contractor. That basically means we are trained to recognize all the hazards of an oil refinery and in the event of an emergency, we are trained to know how to respond.

There is some variety on a day-to-day basis, because you complete different activities following your project schedule. One day you have meetings, the next day you talk to the customer via teleconference. The variety also comes when traveling. I travel on average once a month, but in the last three months of 2007, I went to Brazil four times!

The engineers that I have working on my project team are electrical engineers who have been working here about as long as I have, about 30 years. Then there's an instrument engineer, who is a fairly young guy, a structural engineer who has been working here about 10 years, a piping engineer who has been working here about 10 years, and a project engineer, who oversees some of the day-to-day activities, but he has only been working here for a few years. We also have a person doing vendor document control. We are generally all engineers, but we just have different specialties, but that is what makes up our team. We are all important parts. All of the people are similar in that they all have degrees in engineering, but I am unique because I am the only one that the company paid to educate.

The attitude in my department is that it is somewhat of a team effort, but not completely because the current state is that people are not assigned just to my team alone; they are assigned to multiple projects. A lot of people are overstressed because they are overseeing many projects at once, so I try to resolve conflict whenever there are problems. If someone has to do work for me and for someone else, I go and talk to the other project manager and we compare schedules to see when we the latest deadline is possible that we need the team member to get the work done. If they can wait a week, we push it back. We as project managers resolve the conflicts between team members' schedules to make it easier on them and to ensure that they do a better quality job.

It has been difficult on my family life because I travel all the time and go on international trips. It is difficult on my family to have me gone a lot. One trip takes about one week. When I was first married, I was going to school at night and working during the day. Then there were times when it was just the opposite. I was going to work during the day and going to school at night. It was difficult on me because I rarely had free time. The little free time that I had, I spent doing homework and commuting. I lived in the suburbs, but I had to commute to the south side of Chicago. It would take at least an hour to get to school and back. But, by maintaining a certain schedule and a lot of determination, I learned to manage my time.

After 30 years, it's $100,000. When I first started with the company in 1978, I started at $17,000. Also, as a project manager, I get a yearly increase in salary. I'm also at the bonus level, and earn what is called management incentive. That means the bonus considers the amount of years I've been working at the company, and at certain levels only a select amount of people that have been working there that long are eligible for the bonus. You also have to be a certain grade level; if you are a secretary that has worked at my company for 30 years, you still aren't at the same grade level as an engineer.

My salary has generally increased over the years, but in certain years when the company did good business, they would give the employees a very good raise, and then sometimes when the company was not doing very good business, the raises weren't as good. Sometimes they could be two percent, and sometimes they were eight percent. If you become eligible to get a promotion to another level, you get your regular annual raise, plus another promotional raise. And also, whenever you get promoted, you get a certain percentage of your salary.

Many times while I am at home, there are urgent situations where I have to answer e-mail to someone who is in a different place in the world. Sometimes in the middle of the night, I have to answer emails. For example, at night, my customers in Korea are already working at their jobs the next day. I have to answer them in a timely fashion. Sometimes I'll have to give up watching my favorite show on TV so I can respond to them.

I first thought that the job was exciting with the scope of work that is required, and that goes along with the project. I still think it's exciting!

I am able to visit exciting foreign countries and cities around the world. My favorite aspect of my career is all the different opportunities in a company like this.

Some of the negatives about my job are meeting project deadlines. There are not enough hours in a day! To deal with this, I work overtime, often a lot of extra hours. Another con is traveling and not being able to go to my children's school functions, like football games or band concerts. If I'm on a business trip and there's a concert, I can't go to that, and sometimes I don't get a choice and I have to miss out on their functions.

The most frustrating thing about my job is acting as project manager and getting some of the project team to complete the work on time!

One of the main trends that is likely to affect new people in the profession is the economy. Another trend is the state of the petrochemical industry. The future price of oil and whether people are building or not building are two very important factors that will affect people planning on entering the field of civil engineering. Of course, all these things effect people that are already in the field as well.

I feel very stable about my current job. I deal with international business and there are lots of people that are building right now, especially in South America. I feel very secure at my company, especially after 30 years of employment.

Some very important qualities are that you have to be good in math. You also have to have to have some type of interest in structures. But the biggest quality is determination. You have to be determined to complete your degree.

Some good advice would be to get an internship at a company during the summer to see if it's what you really like and also to get a feel for the company and how things work there. In order to do this, someone looking for a summer job or internship would send a resume to the company they are interested in to see what opportunities are available.

People that have a high level of enthusiasm, people who ask a lot of questions so that they learn things, are the people that succeed. The people that fail are the ones that are passive and don't ask any questions. These types of people don't advance.

I won't retire for at least another 10 years. But when I do retire, the benefit would be to work on a consultant basis on the time that I desire. I could come in one, two, three, or four days a week. But I want to stay active in that manner.

When I started out, I wish I had known the trends more. I also wish I had known more about the petrochemical industry at that time, instead of having to learn everything from scratch, because it takes time to learn those things.