 Hi there! Today we'll be talking about why I decided to choose a career in mining engineering. So if you're watching this video, perhaps you've heard a little bit about what mining engineering is, but you're not totally sure if this is the right career for you. So today what I'll talk about is the exact story about how I end up choosing mining engineering and sort of the thought process along the way and the specific qualities that made me chose mining engineering as a career. So let's just get started here. So first I'll start off with a story. So the story actually started in high school when I was about in grade eight. My mom actually picked up an earth science textbook from a garage sale and this earth science textbook was actually for people in around grade 10. So few grades higher than what I was currently at, but I was intrigued about earth science. So I started flipping through the textbook and just started reading a little bit about earth science and I just started getting intrigued about it. It was something that I was curious about and the more I read into it the more interested I got. And so that was sort of the first encounter and a few years later I actually went on a field trip to a museum called the Dynamic Earth Museum which is in Sudbury, Ontario in Canada and this Dynamic Earth Museum actually is also known as the Big Nikko Mine because there's a big giant Nikko right outside of the museum and for those who don't know Nikko, there's also the name of the 5 cent coin for Canadians. What's so special about this Dynamic Earth Museum is not just the Big Nikko that's in front of it but also deep underground there's actually a test mine underneath it and so our true group actually got a chance to go underground and go visit the test mine and as I went through the test mine I was super perplexed about how they know exactly where to dig and how they develop all these giant network of tunnels underground and I was just super curious about how this mining process works entirely. And so that was when I started getting more intrigued about what mining is and then thirdly a few more years later down the road so after I finished high school and I got accepted into university I started researching more online about what mining engineering is and just what the mining industry is all about and then I came through this TV show called Mining Your Future which follows two hosts as they travel across British Columbia to learn about different jobs and roles within the mining industry and mining engineering happened to be one of them and that got me more intrigued about what mining engineering is and also I watched the other job shadow segments that they had and just learning about all the different functions within the mining industry and just learning about how complex and integrated this industry really is really piqued my interest and so that's sort of the story of background about how I got interested in mining engineering and then when it came to selecting discipline placements for second year engineering at UBC I actually did more research and then I figured out that mining engineering is probably the right career for me but at that time it was more of a gut feeling but now after a few years into the industry working through different internships and full time jobs looking back I've distilled it to five main qualities that made me choose mining engineering so the first quality is the curiosity aspect so as you can probably tell from my story already mining engineering and the mining industry itself was something that I was super curious about and so naturally I had this internal push this internal drive for me to pursue mining engineering because I wanted to learn more about it the next quality is that mining engineering and mining industry itself is very fast paced very dynamic with an operational focus so when you're working as a mining engineer one of your main's responsibility is probably that you're going to be a mine planning engineer which means you're responsible for putting out mine plans depending on the time frame that you're working with so for a short range maybe you are responsible for the day-to-day for mid-range maybe looking at quarterly plans and then for long range you could be looking at yearly plans but the thing about running a mining operation is that a lot of things can change and whenever these things change you're going to be responsible for adapting and changing your mine plan and providing direction to the operation or stakeholders on what's the next best move so for example things that can change are weather changes or perhaps equipment breaking down or operational delays and whenever one of these things change you're going to have to adapt and change your mine plan and provide new updates to people and so perhaps throughout the week maybe none of these things happen or maybe they can all happen within a day and so you're going to have to be ready on your toes and be very quickly be able to adapt to these changes and that's the fast-paced excitement of working as a mining engineer the third quality is that mining engineering can be an intellectually stimulating career so as a mining engineer as I mentioned before one of your main deliverables is putting out a mine plan and whenever you're putting out a mine plan you're going to have to take into account a lot of different things one of your main goals is to achieve production target but in order to meet production targets you will also need to consider a lot of different things for example safety of the operator so I'll be moving the equipment to dig out the material and then you also have to consider geotechnical safety risk then you also have to consider environmental concerns and then you also have to consider the financial aspects of doing your mine plan does it make reasonable sense financially for people to execute your mine plan so you have all these different things that you need to balance and it could be very intellectually stimulating at times to try to figure out all these components in order to make the best mine plan for the operations to do the next quality is that mining engineering is a high paying career with great vertical and lateral mobility so as you probably already know mining engineering is one of the best paying careers out there and in terms of the vertical and lateral mobility the vertical mobility refers to your ability to move up the organizational ranks so for example you're starting out as a junior engineer and then you can progress on to become a senior mining engineer and then you could become the mine technical lead or the leader of a mine planning group and then afterwards you could become a general manager and then you become the mine general manager and then from there on you can progress to even more senior ranks such as senior leadership positions or even C-suite positions so a lot of vertical growth for you if you start out as a mining engineer and then in terms of the lateral mobility that refers to your ability to move laterally into different job functions that are not directly related to mining engineering so for example as a mining engineer you could perhaps transition into hardware so for example working at original equipment manufacturers or to transition into software where you work with mine planning software as a consultant or perhaps maybe you're interested in the finance side of things you can transition into careers like investment banking or equity research or if you're very entrepreneurial you can always start your own business and start your own mine using the mining engineering skills and knowledge that you've developed and the last quality is the opportunity to work outdoors so as a mining engineer when you're developing plans it's very important that you get a good look in the field to see what the actual conditions are like to know what you're designing and to get feedback from the operators so working outdoors is a very important part of your job but the exact frequency or duration that you're expected to spend outdoors varies depending on your position and the company that you're at so as a short-range mine planner depending on the company that you're with you may be required to go out into the field every single day or some companies may only require you to go out into the field once or twice a week and then when you go on to mid-range mine planning you probably go out even less maybe just once a week and if you're a long-range planner maybe once a quarter or maybe once a year so it really depends on the company and the position that you're in but as a mining engineer engineer typically you are required to have some sort of field presence and it's nice to have that mix of spending time in the office and spending time in the field to get that nice mix of balance in the working environments so there you have it this was my story about why I decided to pursue mining engineering and the five qualities that made me interested in mining engineering as a career so I hope this helped you guys a lot and if you're new to the channel make sure you subscribe to my channel so that you don't miss out on future videos about mining engineering as a career as always if you have any questions leave them down in the comments below I'll be happy to answer them so that's it for this video and we'll see you next time