I got a co-op position in Richmond, VA with Dupont, starting in the spring semester. Anyone know much about the area? Co-op/live there? Sorry to be vague...

10/26/2006 2:02:20 PM

I'm pretty familiar with the area. What do you do you want to know?

10/26/2006 2:04:08 PM

There are quite a few of us.

StateIsGreat is currently on rotation in Richmond with dupont.

i finished my rotations a little over a year ago at the site, and now work for corporate engineering in delaware..

what exactly would you like to know?


the plant site is in a neighborhood you dont want to stay in, so youll be commuting, but its not that bad.

try to stay somewhere close to the chippenham for ease of going to work, or downtown is nice if you get on the nicer part of monument st. if you are more into going out and shit. but then its like a 30 minute each way commute to work.

I stayed in colonial hieghts for a year, then further up parham the next time.

what's your major?

(i hope you're the EE hire, Jack is the best person ive ever worked for in my life)

[Edited on October 26, 2006 at 2:07 PM. Reason : e]

10/26/2006 2:06:14 PM

If your getting any tattoo work done see Mike Mosses at Salvation Tattoo. Lot's of cool stores on Cary St.

10/26/2006 2:09:17 PM

"The Fan" is a pretty cool area for restuarants and bars. I was stuck out in Chesterfield when I interned up there.

10/26/2006 2:30:49 PM

The Fan and the Bottoms are about the only places to go out at night.

its not really a college town, lots of young professionals, so going out gets pricey.

ie. richbrau is about the best bar, and its like $6 bottles of bud on weekends.


(but, when i was there, there were about 18 co-ops, all over paid and underworked, so there was lots and lots of partying)

[Edited on October 26, 2006 at 2:40 PM. Reason : e]

10/26/2006 2:33:57 PM

I don't do much here except work, exercise, eat, and sleep. A kid's gotta pay for his tuition and his hunger cravings.

pilgrimshoes (What's up!) and kbbrown3 would be much better sources for information on what to do outside of work. I live about 25-30 minutes from Richmond proper and do my thing there. I have become a lot better cook since being on co-op ed for the past year.

The coops you'll be working with in the spring love to party; so very, very unlike the coops who I'm working with this term, but like the coops in pilgrimshoes' term. You'll have fun with those guys.

DuPont is a good place to work for, that's all I'll say on this subject. The area around the plant is in the ghetto south of Downtown Richmond. You'll be spending all your time on site, so don't fret. I agree that Jack is the best person to work for; you just might get some patents.

I'm ready to come back to Raleigh after a year's absence, and hopefully I'll be making one of these threads in the near future asking about a summer internship with ExxonMobil in New York...


[Edited on October 26, 2006 at 3:25 PM. Reason : b]

10/26/2006 3:01:37 PM

I thought there were plenty of college kids there. VCU is spread all over downtown. Go to the Village for coffee and a snack or head accross the street to Panda Veg for some amazing Vegiterian Asian food for a reasonable price. Other than that get some beer load up a backpack, hop on your bikes and go down to the river.

10/26/2006 3:21:27 PM

born and raised there.... whatcha need to know?

10/26/2006 4:53:18 PM

I was born in Richmond, Va.

10/26/2006 4:55:55 PM

That's the Spruance plant, right?

It's not as bad as people say...I interned at the Fayetteville plant (add me as yet another DuPonter from NCSU!) and traveled to Spruance for a week of eZSource training. (Note: I'm a Supply Chain grad, not an Engineer)

I don't know much about the area, but I do know something about DuPont: work hard, and impress (actually impress, not kiss butt) and 99% of the time you'll get a full-time job offer. And they pay incredibly well for new grads.

10/26/2006 5:35:41 PM

7th most dangerous city in the US. have fun.

10/26/2006 6:34:45 PM

I lived there this summer while doing an internship and loved it. My boyfriend lives in the Fan- it's a great location in relation to bars, restaurants and a cool college area. I lived out in the West End which is kind of like Cary here, but really nice and safe. There's some sort of festival almost every weekend- there was one this summer where you paid 20 bucks for a beer mug and could drink/eat all day for free. I'm leaving to go up there tommorrow morning, actually. I thought the cost of living was a little higher than in Raleigh- but they have Verizon internet for cheap and gas is only 1.95 / gallon!

Also, I think Baja is probably the best bar- and they do rediculous specials every nite.

Good restaurants to check out: Millie's, Osaka (short pump), graffiti grille, julep's, comfort, acacia, mama zu's, strawberry street cafe

VA = Happy Hour Specials !!!

i used richmond.com a bunch this summer to find cool stuff to do- ie - right now, a bunch of the nicer restaurants are doing 3 course meals for 22.06 with 2.06 going to benefit the Central Virginia Food Bank- We have reservations at Julep's on Saturday!

[Edited on October 26, 2006 at 6:56 PM. Reason : I forgot some stuff!]

10/26/2006 6:47:46 PM

Just don't get dicey with going out to eat cuz it can get expensive fast. I suggested a steakhouse for a place to eat and we ended up at Morton's

10/26/2006 7:38:02 PM

Oh and White Dog might be my favorite restaurant ever up there. On Main Street.
I like Bamboo or Kuba Kuba for lunch.

10/26/2006 8:14:43 PM

Richmond is an awesome place to live, if you don't live in the "dark" part of town. At one point, it had one of the highest crime rates in the land. My dad used to work at DuPont in Richmond and said it was a great company to work for. We actually lived in Midlothian, right outside of Richmond. Midlothian has exploded since we left. Really pretty neighborhoods in the area and great school system

10/26/2006 9:45:55 PM

Where's the "dark" part?

10/26/2006 9:49:02 PM

I've seen some shady shit go down in RVA

10/26/2006 9:53:00 PM

^^^ no kidding. midlothian has something new every couple months when i head home!

10/26/2006 9:57:01 PM

yeah the west end is nice, i lived there for a while.

mmmm kuba kuba



btw, after working at spruance and working for corporate (i have jobs running at 16 different sites and 12 businesses currently), spruance is very different from any other plant site. they are absolutely destorying profit margins on both their afs and now sides. the atmosphere at plants that are making more money than they can spend is good.

much different than some acid plant.

people in manufacturing work their entire careers to get to the richmond site, getting a foot in the door there is very nice.


and yes, they pay current college grads, very, very, very well (my offer was ~15% higher than other offers from IBM, Intel, etc)


if you need any help deciding on the job, feel free to im or pm me, i can get you any information that youd need and probably just about anything else.


Ive still got an upstanding reputation there, eh StateIsGreat?

[Edited on October 26, 2006 at 10:05 PM. Reason : e]

[Edited on October 26, 2006 at 10:06 PM. Reason : e]

10/26/2006 9:59:56 PM

Damn, way to drop some knowledge, pilgrimshoes, I didn't know Spruance was so well reknown in the DuPont arena. Makes me think I should have worked harder .

The coop who took your place in Spring didn't do shit but play around all day, but another coop this term w/ Jack from Penn State got the hookup with a patent, and a full ride for grad school with Uncle DuPont footing the bill. Maybe I should have been an EE... Nah!

10/26/2006 10:18:22 PM

295

10/26/2006 10:28:03 PM

Yeah, pilgrim's right, my offer was about 15% more than similar ones. And Spruace is the hottness in terms of making profit for the company.

But for real, DuPont's a chemical company. You'll fare WAY better as an engineer, although they do respect their business folk to.

Although DuPont pays well, I'll tell ya this: their respect for employees (as seen in the sucky pension move) overall is going down the crapper, sadly along with every other major corporation. But hey, that's life I guess.

[Edited on October 26, 2006 at 11:23 PM. Reason : .]

[Edited on October 26, 2006 at 11:27 PM. Reason : .]

10/26/2006 11:22:38 PM

I have family in Richmond - southside/Chester - I like it there aside from the traffic they have through their neighborhoods. The Fan is nice though.

I interned with DuPont in Wilmington (HQ in Delaware, not NC) and enjoyed it. I'd really, really like it if they offered me something at Spruance.

10/26/2006 11:23:50 PM

Wow, a lot better response than I hoped for! As you can tell by the post I don't quite know what to ask, but the info on the housing seems enlightening, especially the ghetto part, definitely don't want to be there. Other than I'm liking what I hear, I'm used to living 20-30 minutes from school and work so that's no biggie.

I'm in Chemical Engineering, actually am finishing up transcribing the 205 problem set for my group to turn in tomorrow at like 8. The division I'll be going into is with AFS, advanced Fiber Systems, supposedly some Nano application from what the interviewer told me which is my concentration.

I guess, what places are good to live (15-30 minutes fine), and how do you hook up with other co-ops for living together? I got a "DuPont Apartment Guide", which lists places like...Hermitage Manor apartments, Treehouse, Jamestown Apartments...so many to choose from, although the rent isn't quite that appealing without roomies.

10/27/2006 12:04:01 AM

^ I just found an engineer on-site who just purchased a sweet house and didn't wanna pay the monthly mortgage alone, and he let me move into a room sans a contract for my 8 months for a reasonable rate.

Check around on site, typically single guys love renting out rooms as it cuts into their house payment and you typicall don't bother them just residing in a room they're not using anyway.

10/27/2006 7:20:05 AM

I just spent a week there. Richmond is better than Hawaii. No lie.

10/27/2006 7:58:26 AM

Quote :

"The coop who took your place in Spring didn't do shit but play around all day, but another coop this term w/ Jack from Penn State got the hookup with a patent, and a full ride for grad school with Uncle DuPont footing the bill. Maybe I should have been an EE... Nah!"

the fuck? i was pushing for that for me!

and i havent heard shit from the 3 patent applications since all the paper work went through about a year ago, makes me wonder if they are leaving me out of it, when i did all the work and they were my designs!

10/27/2006 9:03:14 AM

Quote :

"Richmond is better than Hawaii"

I'm gonna hafta go on my personal experience here and say [NO].

10/27/2006 9:35:20 AM

^You better get on Jack's ass (no homo) abou that! I don't know anything about it, but this Penn State guy could be stealing your work and passing it off as his own... Engineers don't do that kind of stuff, right?

Quote :

"I'm in Chemical Engineering, actually am finishing up transcribing the 205 problem set for my group to turn in tomorrow at like 8. The division I'll be going into is with AFS, advanced Fiber Systems, supposedly some Nano application from what the interviewer told me which is my concentration."

Can't tell you much about AFS; I work in Tyvek. They don't have as many coops and it's a whole different atmosphere in AFS than in Tyvek. Like I said before, the coop group in the Spring party hard so get chummy with them. I think I have an idea of the project you'll be working on also.

10/27/2006 9:47:31 AM

the co-op that went in after me passed off all my work as his.

i know that much for sure.

despite the fact that all my research notebooks had my name plastered all over them


(to the point of using my simulation data, actual run data, pictures i took, and samples i made, and shit on his end of term presentations

[Edited on October 27, 2006 at 9:57 AM. Reason : e]

10/27/2006 9:56:43 AM

i would check craigslist apartments- I'm in richmond today and tommorrow so let me know if you find something you want me to pick up a little real estate flyer or something

10/27/2006 5:08:16 PM

Quote :

"Quote : "Richmond is better than Hawaii" I'm gonna hafta go on my personal experience here and say [NO]. "

That's because you don't live on Oahu. I'd rather live in NC at this point.

10/27/2006 8:03:11 PM

^ This is true. I stayed in Kona (Big Island) and loved every minute of it.

10/27/2006 8:36:26 PM

^^I lived on Oahu once as well, and when I was there I felt the pull of North Carolina.

I also got a flyer of what looks like room rentals in houses, some look pretty good...would you guys recommend a room, apartment, or is that just my preference?

10/27/2006 9:56:51 PM