THE CO-OP: This was my first co-op and I worked (and still work part-time) at Johnson Matthey, a New Jersey-based sustainable technologies plant that refines platinum, gold, silver, palladium and other precious metals. I worked in maintenance and engineering and have come in contact with smelting precious metal bars, operating and maintaining heavy chemical reactors and other such equipment, analyzing failed equipment to determine cause of failure, overseeing the construction of new plant equipment acting as head engineer, and redesigning the entire site’s lockout/tagout safety procedures for the proper de-energizing of our reactors.
THE OBJECT: I’m wearing a bump cap. It’s representative of the hazards of the location. They are required on the production floor, since right above your head are huge tanks of concentrated hydrochloric acid (among other chemicals used for stripping metal). And, security is so tight at Johnson Matthey, it’s one of the few things I could get out of the facility.
THE TAKEAWAY: Before this co-op I absolutely hated chemistry. Now I quite enjoy it. At Johnson Matthey I realized that chemistry was so much better in practice — seeing it happen in front of me on large-scale chemical reactors — rather than out of a book. One of the biggest things I learned was how to accept criticism. I think at Drexel, or more specifically in classes, they just give you a B and that’s it. In person, at a job like this, it’s so much more. We take time and work collaboratively to figure out how to do something better. It’s a much more personal experience.
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