Devika Sureshbabu

I would basically be giving a huge thanks and shout out to my team that I was working in, and my manager. In my team, I was the only girl, so they were really helpful and caring towards me. They gave me the liberty to take a rest if needed, and they were really considerate about my situations. Because I was just fresh out of my college, my seniors used to help me with something if I used to get stuck with it. They used to make me understand the concepts behind certain things if I had doubts. They used to walk me through everything, basically babysitting me kind of situation. So whatever I learned was basically because I had really good team and managers and teams.

The best advice I received was from one of my other team managers who was involved in our team as well. He saw me functioning and working and actually guided me to tell me that I am good at engineering, but he sees more potential in the managerial side of it, because I'm really good at talking, I'm really good at communicating with people, approaching people, and things like that. He told me a master's would help me get an edge and help me build the skills that I'm already good at to another level, which would help me down the lane. So he was like, you should really try to do a management degree kind of thing and see from there where you want to go and how you want to build yourself better.

I would say any female getting into that area, I would say it has to be just to be very open-minded to all the things that happen around you, and don't be conscious about yourself, or don't get overwhelmed that there's only guys around you. They should feel more empowered. I feel like you should feel more empowered as a girl, because you are there competing for the same position with other guys, and it doesn't really change anything. The skill set that you bring on to the table, it doesn't matter if you're a guy or a girl. A lot of time, girls get overwhelmed because there's no girl around, or because guys don't understand everything and anything like how girls understand each other. So I just feel like, just be a bit open-minded, and try it on, and experience and experiences with what you've got. Just keeping an open mind to everything and anything would do a big help to you to grow and help yourself grow.

I would say it's really adverse conditions. The oil operation where it's done, you can't be around the local civilization. So you are placed somewhere in a desert, or somewhere like barren land kind of thing. So it's a lot of alone time, and there's no social life, per se. Your professional life also becomes your personal life, because you are not only working with them, but you're also living with them at the same time, because you can't live with anyone else because of all the radiation and stuff, and all the safety precautions. Jumping right after my college into somewhere really different was overwhelming in the very beginning. Professionally, the entire operation was dynamic, so anything could happen at any point of time, so there was a lot of dynamic decision that you had to make at that point. For instance, there was once a coil tube stuck inside the well, so we had to figure out what to do. We had to change the procedure of how to remove it. Because it's underground, we don't know how the surface is going to react to certain chemicals. So it stuck, so we have to think on our seat, like, what else can we do? Which other chemical could probably loosen the grip and help for the tubing to be removed. So it was quite fun and challenging at the same time.

I feel like the values that I hold onto as a deal-breaker kind of thing, is I don't budge on my opinions. If I have certain things to say, or if I feel like I'm in the right, or if I know for a fact that I'm right about certain things, if I know about something, I make sure that I say it out loud. I could be wrong, or there could be possibly another way to look at certain things, and I'm open to listening to your opinion, but I feel like the one thing that helps me keep going is basically I don't shut up just because people tell me to shut up. Or if people want to talk over me or something, I make it a fact that, okay, you can talk, but whenever you're done, I am going to give my opinion on whatever that is. If it's asked for, that is. But I feel like being honest and being truthful to yourself comes first, rather than pleasing 500 other people that probably won't even be in your life 5 years down the line.