Mining and Minerals Engineering: A day in the life

I'm Mitchell Dreffer. I'm a mining engineering student at Virginia Tech. I'm from Charlotte, North Carolina, and this is a day in my life at Virginia Tech. I start with my technical elective for my major, which is environmental geochemistry. Our main focus is water, so we're focusing on how water interacts with different types of rock and how that affects the environment as a whole. It's a pretty interesting class, and it definitely applies to mining. We talk a lot about acid mine drainage, which is a huge environmental concern. It's really important to my major, that's why it's a technical elective, but it's also really important to my minor, which is green engineering. If I'm taking a class for both, I try and get them to relate to each other, just so when I go out into my career, I know kind of what to look for, how to speak the lingo, and talk to some of those environmental engineers that I'll work with in the future. After that, I have a little bit of a break, so I usually go to the Holden computer lab and work on some capstone project work with my group. designing a mine from cradle to grave. We get exploratory data from a company, translate it into a software. We'll design a mine based off of that. After the mine is closed out, we'll figure out, oh let's turn this surface quarry into a water reservoir so when residences eventually end up around it, it'll be a nice pond that people can walk around. It'll store fresh water for them to use every day. After my capstone project work is done, I'll go to a classroom in Holden and take my mine water reservoir and engineering class. It focuses on anything that mine water entails. We learn about water treatment in this class as well and how to make sure that water is clean before you send it back into the environment. All the environmental standards that go behind that. Where that water will come from and then treat it after we pump it out. Make sure that we keep that area dry and safe for workers. After that class I'll have a mine health and safety systems class and that it meets once a week so it's a little bit longer but it's really important class for us to take. We learn a lot about the accidents and history of mining and the stigma that a lot of people have with it and it's it's really important for us to learn that history so we don't repeat it and learn where all these rules come from why safety is such an important cultural aspect of mining. It's really just focused about protecting the workers of the industry and making sure moving forward we have their health and their safety at the top of our minds before anything else. Finally, I'll go home, grab a quick bite to eat, and then I'm off to practice on the other side of campus and rehearse for the Marching Virginians. It's a really big community and a lot of teamwork goes behind it. It's just really fun to go to the football games and play in the stands, play in between the downs. You get to see people grow throughout. We're learning drill every single day. I'm making sure people are in the right spot for their drill, and I'm learning different music every single day. It's taught me how to work in a fast-paced environment, get projects done on a short deadline, being able to lead a team of people who are working at the same time together and making sure 330 people are doing what they're supposed to be doing at all times. it's honestly almost magical just because it's like how do we get this many people to do it? We have a really high demand for mining engineers but not a lot of people do it. Getting internships and experience in the industry is really easy and it's really accessible. I've been able to have two internships while I've been at Virginia Tech. My first one was with Heidelberg Materials. I was a performance improvement engineering intern. I was to drive a haul truck and I operated a loader and I was in the mines. Last summer I worked for Austin Powder which is an explosives company. With that internship I worked with their technical representative team. I learned how to fly a drone and I was taking drone photogrammetry pictures, GPS surveying all over the place. At the end of the summer I was actually able to design my own blast and set it off myself. It was pretty fun. After I graduate I'll be working for Austin Powder as a technical representative, so similar to what I did last summer, hopefully become a manager at some point and kind of relive my drum major glory days in the industry and orchestrate some blasting crews and technical representatives. I'm really excited to get back out there and start my career.