By Renee Baker (TIS student 2008-2010)
About two years ago, we interviewed Mandy Zheng (Class of 2010), who had been in her final year at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada. She had gone to Haida Gwaii, a series of islands along the British Columbia coast, for a semester immersed in nature as sponsored by the UBC Forestry program. Recently, I caught up with her again to find out what she’s done since then, and where she plans to go from here.
To recap her college experience – Mandy studied geology because she simply didn’t want to study anything else. “I took some first year science classes, and when I got to upper year, I took environmental site assessment, hydrogeology, soil, geophysics, etc,” she says. “I think I liked hydrogeology the most. It’s like hydrology, but dealing solely with groundwater. It’s complicated, but I like it.”
As a university graduate, Mandy has two pieces of advice for incoming freshmen, “Firstly, use your free time cautiously, because you don’t get a lot of that when you start working. Secondly, take a year off to learn when in university – maybe go on an exchange.” During her four years of university, she didn’t join clubs or activities because she wasn’t a sports person, but she did spend a lot of time doing self-improvement and living life to the fullest. “I painted, knitted, did yoga, went camping, volunteered, traveled, and went out a lot. I got to know a lot of people. As a result, I didn’t get much sleep, but there are too many things to do!”
Currently, Mandy is in the middle of an 8-month contract with Canfor, “one of the world’s largest producers of sustainable lumber, pulp, and paper”, according to their website. “I work in field operations – I lay out blocks (mature forest stands) for harvesters to go and log the trees with machines. I tie ribbons on trees so the harvesters know where their boundary is,” says Mandy. “I also GPS a lot of points and make maps using Arcmap, which is a GIS software.” Since Mandy has been doing forestry contracts for a year now, she’s pretty used to the work. “You trip and fall many times a day. There are wasps, bees, and horseflies. Lots of muddy road when it rains, sleds and snowshoes in the winter, ATVs in the summer.”
Mandy spends 90% of her working days out in the forest. Originally she had started out planting trees, but she secured a contract with Canfor because of her experience on Haida Gwaii. She isn’t sure if she wants to stay in the forestry industry longterm and expresses her desire to try other things in life. “I’m not sure what. Maybe some other kind of geology. Traveling. Reading.”