A student in i-SAFE - Agro, Food & Environmental Engineering, Jeanne did her internship on an Australian ranch. Read her story.
An internship at UniLaSalle is an opportunity to learn from professionals and confirm what you've learned, but also to discover worlds you'd never suspect! An internship? No, an adventure in the Australian outback - that's what you can expect when, like Jeanne, you dare to embark on an unusual internship!
As a student in the I-SAFE - Agro, Food & Environmental Engineering program, Jeanne spent 6 months immersed in an environment totally unknown to her: cattle farming in Australia; more specifically, on the GYRANDA ranch, a huge 3,500-animal, 26,000-hectare operation run by the Mahony family.
An incredible ordeal, which she describes as demanding, but full of learning for her future professional life.
A demanding immersion in an intense environment.
When you hear Jeanne talk about her internship, it's easy to imagine an idyllic life under the Australian sun, with great cowboy-cowgirl outfits, but the truth was quite different: "The trip took about 25 hours, and as soon as I arrived, I got to work, I was really exhausted, but I really wanted to make a good impression: I had breakfast, saddled up my horse and off I went! Off to the track!" An experience made all the more difficult by the fact that she had never ridden a horse before! "It was really difficult, but I quickly got used to my horse - I miss him the most!"
And arriving in his new home after his first day wasn't much easier: "The job was great, but life in the surrounding area had no comforts whatsoever: we rarely had electricity or running water! You had to adapt very quickly to living conditions". It's a scary story, but even in difficult conditions, you can find small moments of peace: "I got up an hour early every morning to go and feed the horses before our breakfast, it was a real ritual and it did me a lot of good to spend time with them surrounded by nature".
She tells us about her "super-exciting" working days, with lots of challenges every day: in short, no time to get bored! "I've been through some incredible things: we'd get the bulls into a truck with a restraint corridor, when all of a sudden, one of them turned around and tried to charge me!" More fear than harm in the end; but above all, trials that helped the apprentice engineer grow. "The end was the hardest, when we had to say goodbye to everyone, I had a real goodbye party, everyone gave me a speech, and my bosses gave me lots of presents."
Learning to live on a ranch.
So, yes, it was a difficult internship, but above all it was a highly formative 6 months for the young woman: "I learned a lot about asserting myself in an environment which is basically very macho, and I had to face up to the bosses. In the end, I think they really liked me, they took me to a lot of conferences on the beef industry and sustainable development, and they trusted me with a lot of difficult tasks". An effort that paid off! For Jeanne, it was also an opportunity to put into practice the principles of sustainable development.
Life on the ranch was also an opportunity for Jeanne to discover a way of working with which she was unfamiliar: "It was very organized, every Friday morning we had a staff meeting where the bosses would tell us what we had done well, what we had done badly, and what we would have to do the following week". It didn't take him long to adapt: there are no weekends on the ranch, and work takes precedence over everything else!
Once back in France, the hardest learning curve ended up being readjusting to a culture that was now foreign to her: "It was so cold! It was so cold! And I was more used to cities, I really missed the freedom of the great plains and life on horseback. When I came back, I realized how quickly it had all passed."
An inaccessible internship?
Finally, as she finishes describing her adventure, she advises young engineering students:
"Above all, you have to have the courage to assert yourself and have self-confidence! You also have to be ready to be hyper-independent and spend days on your own, learning on the job. Whether you're a boy or a girl, as long as you're motivated, you can succeed in such a difficult course!"
Article written by Jules Houplon, UniLaSalle Rouen student.
