The day starts with an experience all Shads can relate to, the annoying but familiar sound of my buzzing alarm clock wakes me from my dreams about my Shad experience. As a roll out of bed I get dressed into my business clothes and prepare for the day of work at Cenovus Energy. Cenovus Energy is a Calgary based Oil Company that prides itself in using fresh and progressive thinking in the way it produces oil.
On my first day I nervously walked into the building situated in downtown Calgary, with thirty five hundred employees it is no small company. Myself being a 15-year-old student at the time I had no idea what to expect but they treated me like a ten-year veteran in the field. Within minutes from getting into the building I had my own access card and my own office on the thirty-eighth floor with my own name bar and a view. They sat me down and explained my entire four-week task and within five minutes I sat alone in my office. The task given to me was in the area of Environment and Strategic Planning and looking at how to change the company culture and the employees thinking to be more environmentally conscious. Cenovus Energy is so focused on being a leader in innovative ways of producing oil in the field they need their office culture to match what they have committed to in operations. This is where my job came into play.
I first worked to establish the current company culture and then my mind went crazy from there. I was coming up with some left field ideas that were both realistic and probable. The freedom given to me on this project helped me to come up with many ideas that would otherwise be hampered by restrictions, I felt like a real, trusted and respected employee. In the recent days I have begun to pull my ideas together as my final presentation on Thursday draws closer. Seeing the ideas come together with the budget and the action plan as well as all the groundwork I put in really makes this project seem worthwhile to me.
The information I learned putting energy into this project is tremendous as I am living a real life office experience, to me it is not an internship anymore, and it is a real job. The respect and the credibility given to me is much beyond what some other companies give full time employees and knowing that the work I put into this project will actually be used in improving Cenovus Energy could not have made this experience any better. Lastly I just would like to thank everyone in my group that has supported me, hopefully I do you proud on Thursday and it has been a real honor to be an employee of Cenovus Energy.
Geoff Nicholson
Cenovus Energy
Calgary, AB