I'm an underground miner making as much as $160,000 a year without a college degree. The job saved my life.

• Cory Rockwell is an underground miner at copper mine Nevada Copper in the town of Yerington.

• He works 12 hour shifts for seven days every other week under tough conditions and makes six-figures.

• Here is what his job is like, based on a conversation with Insider's Aaron Mok.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Cory Rockwell, a 38-year-old underground miner at Nevada Copper, a copper mine based in Yerington, Nevada. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Growing up in Los Angeles, I knew I didn't want to work in the Hollywood entertainment industry.

Now, I'm an underground miner — and the job saved my life.

During my 20s, I was lost and had no idea what I wanted to do. At the time, I had no education, no skills, no girlfriend, and no kid. I knew if I didn't get out of LA now I'd be stuck here forever. So I fit everything I owned in my truck and started driving on the 5 North until I ended up in Reno, Nevada, with no plans.

I had applied to supermarket jobs when a friend told me to try this place called Geotemps, a temp agency for mining jobs. I had no idea there were mines in Nevada, but I was interested, so I gave it a shot.

The agency gave me a job at a lithium mine in the small town of Orovada. It was only supposed to last six months, but because there was exploratory drilling happening, I ended up staying for a year.

When the job ended, I realized that I liked it, so I went back to Geotemps and got a job working at a surface mine in the town of Fallon. Three years later, I moved to a different surface mine, but I really wanted to work underground, so I was applying to underground mines on the side.

Years later, I am now a powders guy at underground copper mine Nevada Copper.

I work seven, 12-hour shifts every other week. It's exhausting. 

At Nevada Copper, I'm responsible for dropping explosives into the holes drilled into the ground.

At the end of my shift, I make sure nobody is still underground before I detonate the explosives, leaving behind a big pile of dirt with copper ore. The next day, I go down the mine — which reeks of earth and diesel fuel — and test for toxic gases to make sure it's safe. After that, a colleague loads the dirt into a haul truck where it's dumped into a system that extracts the copper from the debris.

Then, the cycle repeats.

Underground mining is nothing like an office job.

Typically, I work seven days every other week in 12-hour shifts. I wake up at 4 a.m., take the 4:45 a.m. bus ride for an hour to the mine with no phone service, then spend another half an hour to change and attend our daily meeting. By 6 a.m., I take a caged elevator down a mine shaft a mile below ground where there is limited access to fresh air, then emerge from the darkness around 6 p.m. when my shift ends.