Senior Projects

Today we reached the Grand Canyon and this is quite a tourist trap. Twenty five dollars for a chicken breast, proud to say I had a vegetarian meal with meatballs of course. It is completely spectacular, there’s too many people on their phones missing the view.

First, Recap on Texas:

My family lives in a community of Latin American immigrants. Everything, from the schools to the stores to the advertisements on billboards, is in Spanish, so I got a truly immersive experience. I learned a lot of slang, and even more curse words than I knew before, but I was surprised to find out that I had a pretty complete vocabulary already. It was like riding a bike: once I got going, I started to relax and didn’t have to think so much about how to pedal.

 

Update on Photography Stuff:

I think I accidentally started a business?? It started a few weeks ago, when I took my friend Issy’s prom pictures. After she shared them on social media, a girl from church hired me to take her senior pictures. And then another one. And another. So, that was unanticipated, but definitely not unwelcome. It’s actually really fun, and it helps fund college which is the nicest part.

Anyway, yesterday I went to Soulard to take more pictures of STL. The problem is that time is running out on the project, so I’m going to have to shape it so that I have enough pictures to actually speak of. I’ll do my best to complete the photography portion in a way that accomplishes what I imagined, but I have a couple backup plans in case I can’t.

Yesterday we drove from our home to Oklahoma city. Today we drove to New Mexico and are staying the night before driving to the Grand Canyon tomorrow. The occupants of our vehicle are my father, who is celebrating his 50th birthday today and myself.

I finished up at Crisis Nursery this past week, and I’m pretty much done with the volunteer/kid part of my project.

For the next couple of weeks, I will be shadowing nurses at three different hospitals and studying a lot for my AP test. The details for lots of my shadowing are still up in the air so I hope nothing falls through!

Wednesday-Lots of patients came in. I have the duty to clean the exam rooms after appointments. I’m also now holding some of the dogs when they need injections or blood drawn. We even saw a chocolate lab named Elsa whose mom was a parent of a guy who played on Crosspoint’s soccer team, so while Dr. Leonard was examining the dog, I had a nice conversation with the mom about Crosspoint, and how she was considering sending her two younger kids to our school.

Today-Again, lots of patients. Elsa was brought in again today to get an x-ray of her back legs, because she presented with pain in her left hind leg. She wouldn’t put any weight on it, and while looking at the x-rays, Dr. Leonard concluded that she had an ACL tear. Later, Mrs. Rawlins came in! I held onto Rosie and Lucy while they had their exams. So far, I’m having so much fun here. I get to do a whole lot more here than I did at the architecture firms, which is the opposite of what I thought would happen. Also I like the hours a lot better. I only have to get up early every other day. Mondays and Wednesdays I get to sleep in until noon, while Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays I get there at 9.

Things haven’t changed much since my last post since I’m still at the front desk, so I’m going to make a list of the things I do every day.

10:00: call resident’s who have not canceled their emergency light.  Record all uncanceled lights, check on residents in person who did on answer the phone.

10:45 (any of the following): answer the phone (“Gambrill Gardens this is Abby how may I help you?”), make dinner order form copies for residents, show newcomers around, unlock doors for residents who locked themselves out of their apartments,  give treats to dogs who walk by the desk (very fun), write up and file Repair Work Order forms for residents, write up new package slips, organize incoming prescriptions from Walgreens, and go to various buildings to let in paramedics for non-emergency calls.

1:00: mail sorting

1:30-4:00 same as 10:45!

*My duties are not destitute and I enjoy them… but I also enjoy alliteration and assonance.

For this week, I am shadowing Mr. Levinson at PAI Fashion. PAI fashion is a big wholesaler company that mainly sells headwear and apparel. And Mr. Levinson is both the owner and the vp Secretary of the company.

The main work I did for this week was to stay with Mr. Levinson and observe all the works he does as a vp. He is quite a busy person. He usually has hundreds of emails to read and reply and a huge amount of meetings to attend. He is an extremely energetic and passionate businessman.

Monday: We had six meetings. Most of them were about preparing for the big annual meeting of factory operation on Tuesday. So they were basically discussions towards the data of the annual cost. There was one different meeting was a discussion to discover a way to deal with this exclusive proposition 65 that California has.

Tuesday: We had the annual meeting of factory operation in the morning. It was a 3 hours long meeting. All the factory managers under the company came to this meeting. We talked about ways to train new people, motivate the employees, and keep the old experienced workers. After that, Mr. Levinson went to a private meeting with the president and another vp of the company for the purpose of concluding and evaluating the big meeting happened in the morning. They exchanged their genuine opinions about the quality of the discussions happened in that meeting. After that, Mr. Levinson went back to his office to have another meeting with one of the managers was in the morning meeting.

Wednesday: We had 5 meetings today. Some of them were about the situations of the freight. They talked about if all the freights were arrived to the customers on time and ways to lower the cost of freight distribution.

Overall, I really like shadowing Mr. Levinson. I have learned a lot about people skills and management decisions both explicitly and implicitly. I think this internship experience really worth the 100-ish miles drive everyday.

Monday-Today was my first day at Cherry Hills Veterinary Clinic with Dr. Leonard. We saw some patients-a dog named Bozo with suspicious lumps, three dogs needing vaccines, and one mystery dog with pain in his lumbar spine and left hind leg. I helped take x-rays of the spine and chest. She still doesn’t know what’s wrong with him, but we’re hoping to find out soon.

Today-Surgery day! Today was kind of crazy. There were four surgeries on schedule. First, a dental surgery on a pitbull named Jake needing a few teeth pulled. Second, a yellow retriever named Stoney had a big possible benign tumor on his left back hip (about 5″ in diameter). Then, the last two were both historectomy-spays. Two six month old puppies named Zuzu and Oreo. In the first surgery, she asked me to hold Jake’s head so that she could push and drill in his gums without him moving. He was under anesthesia, of course, and heavily asleep, but this surgery made me feel lightheaded. Dr. Leonard told me to go to the break room, and when I sat down in the chair, I fainted! The surgeries after were completely fine, and I didn’t feel dizzy at all, but just the sight of that surgery just kind of freaked me out a bit.

Hello all! Sorry I’ve been MIA (@doc); I have numerous health issues that have had a fun time popping up out of nowhere. So, here’s a basic recap of last week and my (changed) plans:

Tuesday of last week: Returned to Louisville way later than I intended because my car needed a little work.

Wednesday: Got to work on more website stuff, drafted up another report, and checked my research again because I was a little bit manic… then collapsed and had a heart thing. It’s fine. I’m all good.

Thursday: Work from the couch! Revised the report. And then the friend whom I was staying with informed me that her parents were very concerned about my health and wanted me to go back to STL. So…

Friday: More on-paper website planning, packing for the drive. Again.

Saturday: Driving!

So it’s been a time. I’m subsisting off of watermelon and pedialyte for now, but I get to try some vegetables today! If my stomach doesn’t reject it, I will be very happy. I’m sure the health details are probably boring, but that’s kind of been the reality of this. I’m learning how to manage allll of my problems and still get work done.

This Friday, I will be heading out to Austin, TX to work with Austin Pets Alive! They’re an awesome organization, and I’m excited to work with them. The rest of my week will be fleshing out/putting finishing touches on the website, as well as trying to, ya know, live.

TLDR: Things got a little messed up because my health is a disaster, but I’m working on it and getting things done anyway!

The past two days, I have been back at school finishing the geometry spreadsheet I started a few weeks ago.

I’ll spend the mornings Wed-Fri at Crisis Nursery because I enjoyed it and they seemed to need help. From 12:00-4:00 they all nap so I’ll leave once everyone’s down. In the afternoons, I’m studying for my AP Calc test and finalizing details for hospital shadowing next week.