The Recruit

  Being one of the more experienced geologists on the team, sometimes I get the pleasure of mentoring (or at least teaching) new starters on the team.  As troublesome as it sounds and as much as a new starter could potentially drag you down, it wasn't the worst gig a geologist could get on site.  It meant you could spend a roster teaching and the next one supervising. This is assuming you had done your job teaching well in the first place. And if you did a good job and your student was receptive and keen, it wasn't a bad gig at all, especially if you had pressing matters in the office.

  Enter KS. Bright eyed and bushy tailed, she was one of the new prospects the company brought in on the graduate program. Meaning she got paid peanuts. She was however, flown all the way from Houston, which meant she had perks that we didn't have - insurance, housing allowance, and whatever else expats got. She was not my first student. I had a few new starters from my previous job that I had the pleasure of teaching, not to mention colleagues that were technologically challenged and needed constant refreshers about procedures and computer programs. My immediate supervisor back then, was also an ex principal, so what little I knew about teaching and mentoring, I had picked up from him. In that sense, having a student was not new for me.

  KS was a quick learner and very competent. She retained most of what I taught her and in turn helped to consolidate what I knew about iron ore. She still had plenty of technical knowledge to learn still but it was quite easily picked up day by day. Just when I thought she was on the way to becoming a part of the team, she slipped. KS's first roster was about to come to a close and we were eagerly awaiting the flight back home. It was around mid day we received news that the flight had been delayed. GS, a cheeky geologist of kiwi descent suggested we head back to our rooms to shower up before the flight.  We asked permission from the project geologist RS and went back.

  Back at camp, GS and I decided we weren't dirty enough to justify a shower so we went to the wet mess where there was a pool table, cable TV and a table tennis equipment.  KS decided to head to her room for a shower and to rest before fly out.  We agreed to meet up at the truck in an hour.

  GS and I got carried away playing table tennis and got a little late for the meet up.  We didn't realise, but KS had arrived early and when we didn't arrive she began to panic.  She had started the truck and were about to leave without us - violation one.  GS, being GS started provoking her even further by joking that she'd be fired as she was late and it was only her first roster.  KS started to really panic.  I tried to calm her down, justifying the company wouldn't fly her all the way from Houston just to fire her after her first roster.  She was inconsolable.


Upon reaching the office we went to our desks and continued as per normal. GS kept dogging her persistently, saying she'd be fired when we got to Perth. Panicking, she walked up to the project geologist and apologised. She then pointed at me and cited my lack of a sense of time as the reason we were late. I didn't say anything, couldn't say anything, as I looked on in disbelief as I was offered up by my student as a scapegoat. At that moment I knew KS still had a lot to learn. The rapport we built in that one week was immediately broken. It took a while still before it was eventually mended. It was that day I learnt that you can teach a hot shot graduate everything you know, but they must learn life's lessons on their own.