The end

I spent this week shadowing in legal at World Wide Technology. I met with different people within the department–compliance officers, paralegals, and attorneys, mostly. I really enjoyed talking with each person and learning about what they do. I was also quite fascinated with how they got to their position. It really made me realize that there really is no single path. There was one attorney who went to college at 29 and finished law school at 40. Another joined the Department of Defense to escape the Vietnam draft and worked in intelligence for years before deciding to get a joint MBA and law degree to get a unique perspective on the field.

I was also struck by the kindness of everyone there. I was so welcomed, even though none of them had known me before. Everyone was so down-to-earth and generous with their time and advice. I appreciated that so much, and it really set a great example to me for how to treat younger, inexperienced people than I.

I can’t believe that my project is over. Seven weeks of this project whizzed by in a way that classes or summer never have, and it’s actually scared me a little bit that the rest of my life will go by this quickly. But I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this, and I’m pretty excited about my presentation as well.

Thanks for reading seven weeks (or in the teachers’ cases, four years) worth of my rambling. I promise I’m done.

Last Days at the Partnership

If there is one thing I’ve gotten out of this time more than anything else it is that being a part of the efforts here in St. Louis to strengthen our region puts you in a position  to define what it is your life work will be as this is mostly uncharted territory. In most cases jobs define the person, a person who is an accountant does accounting, but here most peoples jobs reflect who they are, what they value and the role they would like to play in this ecosystem. Obviously they have people to answer to and tasks they have to complete but it is well balanced with self-started projects. That’s pretty much exactly how I work. It’s typically really hard for me to work for others, serving the needs for someone as a living doesn’t interest me, but here I think the people who show promise are given the tools to make their vision a part of the partnerships mission. I’ve always thought that I wanted to be an entrepreneur, I still do, but I also realize that working for others can also be rewarding. It was also great to spend m time working on something that I really cared about. I’m not saying I’ve made my life choice but I can see myself dedicating my life to making St. Louis a better place to “Live, Work and Play”

Shadowing and Filing

Over the past two days, I have shadowed the women in the front office. I have learned about their paying, billing, and other financial processes and I’ve filed a lot. Because of all the filing I was doing today, I didn’t sit as much, which I really enjoyed. I still didn’t walk that much (3.8 K steps as of now, at 4:57 pm), but I was standing and moving, more than just sitting and studying or learning, as great as those are.
I was going to go visit a house today, but that got moved back to tomorrow. It is cool, though, now that I’m out of the class and shadowing the people in the front office, I’m interacting with everyone more and that’s made it more fun.
Yesterday, I went to another Community Involvement event. There were just a few of us, a total of 5, and we went mini-golfing. It was super fun to just hang out with the guys and it definitely made my mood go from “eh” to “THIS IS AWESOME!!”
Anyways, hopefully, I’ll finish all my assignments. I’ve only got two more days left! It seems crazy. Guys, we’re gonna graduate really soon.

Gat back to work

I went to San Francisco last week and I went to the University of San Francisco. I went to their admission office and asked about I20 transfer process and what should I do before I go to that school. And I got a card of their international students and scholar service(ISSS). I met some of students who are now studying there and they showed me all around the school.

Today I just get back work and translated some papers and letters. Letters are hard because there are a lot of words I don’t know. I’ll be back on Wednesday and get ready for my presentation in Thursday. I’ll see you guys soon.

 

5/3 Wednesday

Today Nico shared a new project with me–Find Headquarters. It’s a list of hedge fund companies missing defined headquarters. My job is to research where their headquarters are and set it with the companies. It was interesting to search all kinds of hedge funds  and see how there are different from each other. They all specialized in different areas. But it got a little tricky when it came to super large company like Wells Fargo, or whatever group. They are too big that it’s hard to tell the headquarters or they don’t tell you on the website. There are 1600+ companies on the list. It’s overwhelming. I got 100 done today but my eyes were so irritated from staring at the screen continuously.

Library putting stuffs away

Finally I got the chance to put books, tapes stuffs to the shelfs.

They are really organizing people. Books,videos are putted to

1. non fiction (which is organized with numbers)

2. fictions (alphabeted)

3. popular (with stars on the mark)

4. child (with a J on it)

5. foreigner (on the back of it will tell you it has other languages)

6. TV series (usually with episodes something on it)

For books on hold are separated with

  1. first 3 letters of your LAST NAME
  2. first 3 # of your ADDRESS
  3. first 3 letters of your FIRST NAME

That’s the cart they have for librarians to put stuffs away. I finished 3 carts of it which used me 8 hours!! They probably can do it faster.

I felt wonderful when I finished a cart of on hold books!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Learning, Researching, and Playing Basketball

I finished up the worksheets that Coach Frye gave me to research about. They helped me to learn a lot more about psychology and a few mental disabilities, which is pretty helpful for this field.
I did that work in the unscheduled time around the classes that I was taking with the new hires. Some of the classes got a little boring, but Brian and Rico (the two doing the classes) both made it more fun and joked with me. It was interesting to learn a little bit more about workplace dynamics. Some of the stuff reminded me of what I noticed and learned about at ADB. It is cool, though, because I’m pretty sure I’m not irritating anyone. Yesterday, Coach did huff, walk over to me, and dramatically introduce himself as “Brian,” so I’m not allowed to call him Coach anymore, but other than that, everything’s gone smoothly.
Some of their guys pop in and out of the office, like I think I mentioned in my last post. I’ve gotten to interact with a few of them a bit more, but because of the classes that I’ve been taking, I mostly only saw Brian, Rico, and the new hires for the past few days. I think the biggest thing that I took from all of the classes was just that we should treat EVERYONE with dignity and respect, and should give people as much freedom as possible.
Last night, there was an occasion at the YMCA, and I went along. I didn’t have any specific job, unlike most other people, so I just shot baskets for the most part. The guys would come in and out. One of them, who when I met him said that he was full of sunshine, referring to his shirt, shot around with me the longest. You could tell he’d played when he was younger because of the way he handled the ball, and he was super great, getting rebounds for me. A few other guys came in and he was really encouraging with them, which was super cool to see.
Today was pretty slow and I wrapped up my work on the worksheets and talked some with Coach. We planned next week out, and I’m a little bit worried that I won’t be able to finish all of the work that we planned. It’ll be super interesting though, and I’m excited. You know, maybe one day I’ll learn that I shouldn’t be quite so worried and stressed before I go try out something new. I was so nervous to go into Initial Independence, and while I’m not as comfortable here as I am, say, at school, I’m not anxious anymore.

Marshall’s Senior Project – Week 6 Update

I’ve come to realize I think board meetings are kind of silly. I mean people just speak in a way they never would just because. Why would you ever say “And so it is moved to forgo a roll call as quorum has not yet been reached” why not just say “lets not take roll because we know we don’t have enough people to vote yet.”
As far as my work goes at the partnership, I’ve been communicating with community partners who have also been working on resource maps for a specific industry. I’ve also met quite a few people from or have business in New York which is exciting networking wise. Nothing really new to report I’m just finishing the projects I started before my time here is over.

5/10 Tuesday & 5/11 Wednesday

I wish I can write more about my food discovery cuz it’s way more exciting to me and I think I have more to say… I know I haven’t been updating the blog everyday. Instead I’m writing every two day. Because I feel like two days would give me more content so I look busy. Anyway, yesterday I had two resumes in total to format. The first one Nico told me is urgent so I couldn’t spend too much time on it. I quickly edited and sent it over. First she didn’t tell me anything, like if I did a good job or if there was anything I missed. I asked her on my way out of the office and she told me I did it perfectly and that was why she didn’t come to me. So was the second resume. I think I’m getting the hang of it.

Today Stewart asked me to find a guy he heard on the phone or over a conversation. He didn’t know how the name was spell exactly but the sound of it. He told me the first name could be Ryan, Bryan, Bran or something else, and the last name could be Agnew, agneuw.. He asked me in a way as it was super hard to find this person because he said it’a ok if I couldn’t find him. He said he had tried a lot of combinations and still failed. I can say that this was probably the most fun project I had so far. Surprisingly it only took me about 5 minutes trying different combinations of name to find this person. I knew I had him right but I waited for another 10 minutes to report so I could make it seem less effortless.. Stewart was really surprised and glad I found his guy..