Senior Projects

Here is what I did at the museum on Thursday, since there is a lot I will make a separate post of what I did Friday and Saturday for the gala.

Thursday 4/11:

My first work I did was work as greeter at the Key Bistro from 11:00 to 2:00. A big perk are Char, Anthony, Pierre, and Dan who are all very nice to talk to. Today, Pierre was walking up to Dan, and Dan was like, “Oh, what’s up, man?” And Pierre goes, “Not much, baby girl.” Oh my word, too funny. I would also like to say my outfit was slaying Thursday, unfortunately it almost tried to slay me! I say slay me because I was actually wearing a jacket made out of butchering knives, so every time I turned I was almost stabbed. Just kidding. OK, here is the OOTD (Outfit of the Day, in case you don’t know the lingo). I wore these wide legged pleated, high waisted, trousers my mom thrifted for 50 cents. They are so comfortable. Then I wear my mom’s old black tank top with lace trim around the sleeves and neckline. Then as a layer over top, I used my mom’s vintage white, silk button up as a layering piece. Originally, I was gonna button it up, but I liked it better open. The top also has these flowers and leaves pattern on it. It’s not embroidered onto the shirt, the best way I can describe is like they’re almost burnt into it, if that makes sense? Now here’s where I almost got slayed! I was wearing these vintage, black, platform, lace-up combat boots that were my mom’s in the ’90s. And my mom was like, “oh, make sure to maybe take a second pair of shoes with you if they get uncomfortable.” And I was all like, “Say less, boo thang! They’re already in my bag!” (I didn’t actually say the, “say less, boo thang!” part.) And my mom was like, “oh, those aren’t the pair where the heel is coming off, are they?” And I was like, “Nope, LOL!” They were really comfortable, so I figure I wouldn’t swap them out, until later that night, if at all. Then I went to Kat’s office to grab my bag before heading up to the Key Bistro, and BAM!!! The right boots heel came off, so I clomp out of the office and I am taking them off. Then I go to take off the left one, and its heel, also came off! I was like, “SHEEESHHH!!!! It’s a good thing this little goblin brought her converse!” and then I swapped out the boots for the tennis shoes. RIP those boots, I hope I can maybe repair them, somehow. Then I shadowed Dan, who I had not met before at the South (front desk). Dan was very cool. He is retired, but used to write the breaking news reports for KMOV Channel 4. Then he began volunteering at the museum and after a year, he decided to work a few times a week for pay. From 3:00 to 4:00 I stayed with Aslyn at the front desk, where I learned that Aslyn happens to be the one person in the whole museum (so far, maybe there are others) that likes the corn ice cream.Then from 4:00 to 5:00 MJ said I could work the grand hall desk by myself and gave me a radio (walkie talkie) to use if I needed it! An author gave a talk about it and signed books, and there were also a group of Lindenwood University students who came to the first part of happy hour in the lobby to share their projects on the different countries represented at the worlds fair. This is something that is really cool about the History Museum is that they partner with all of the local city colleges to do stuff like this. 

These last days I began looking into the world of databases. Although they seem straight forward and simple like they are a bunch of tables, they are a lot more complex than they seem. First I began looking into database providers like amazon (AWS) and other non local databases. For my project they told me to use a local database(meaning it is stored on this computer). The database in question was postgreSQL which is a provider for these types of db’s. I looked into it and the more I looked the more confusing it got. Thankfully the people here hopped on some calls with me and helped me on the right path. I learned that SQL is the language, basically, that runs the database and it’s better to have a ui like pgAdmin which helps keep track of your database. This Friday I have spent most the day downloading and setting up this software to help my creation of my db and will hopefully finish it on monday.

These first three days I worked further on my project and added input text boxes opposed to just using the computers gps to calculate it. That took some time because I had to have a deeper understanding of the code in order to be able to change the main function of my javascript code. This lead me to a big in my code which I thought was a problem which turned out to be nothing. In order to send a Json object (data if you will), from my webpage to my server it has to be in the right format. Initially I thought that this format was in issue with formatting from the webpage to the flask server. This I later figured out was my own fault because the measurements on the webpage was only expecting two digit numbers. If there are any more digits than en the code wouldn’t work. So for my testing I always put more than three digits. I found this out later after trying a million things.

This week was a little slower than the first two. There was less for me to do, and the things that I did didn’t take me a long enough time to keep me occupied. I got a small research project about the laws that link an employer to their employees and more specifically, how using a work email for personal reasons can lead to other documentation or contracting issues in the future. I sat in on a couple meetings and phone calls about the purchase of a large property and learned of all the pieces of a large transaction like that, especially of a personal property. 

I haven’t been given any more organizational work and I’m very glad for that. In my free time I’ve been productive, but I hope next week is busier.

On Wednesday, I continued doing spreadsheet work and then went to Hans’s house. At his house, he explained to me how many people who do real estate aren’t self-sustaining by it, so people create businesses like lawn care, cleaning, painting, etc. People in the real estate industry always need trustworthy people who do these things, so once you are in the real estate industry, you have the connections that need these services, making easy clients, then you can have the business going on the side and do real estate full time.

Hans also showed me how to analyze a house. Nick The Note Guy, was one of the most popular sellers financing people, and he created a website to analyze houses to see if they are worth it. He also showed me how to call people for possible leads and how to follow up with them. He has automatic messages that are sent to possible clients every so often to make sure that they still remember him.

Today, we went to his AirBnB property. He explained to me everything that he had done to the property. He told me that he would want to get an Airbnb in Colorado or Florida even if it doesn’t make him any profit, but he will be able to take a free trip down there whenever he wants, and I totally agree with that. We then talked for a while about Whole Sailing because if I were to get into real estate right now, then I would be doing Whole Sailing. You find properties in bad condition, contract with a seller to buy their property for a good deal, and then assign that contract to another buyer for a fee. The buyers are usually flippers who own bad properties.

I was mainly at two stores this week. I was hopping between Metro and Washington stores. At these stores, I did mechanical work on the walk-ins and updated all the menus and registers for the new series of wraps Subway introduced. On Tuesday I experienced one of the managers being fired at Dorsett’s location. For the rest of the week, Rayne and I interviewed potential candidates. Today I had a DC meeting, we mainly discussed our social media approach for introducing our bill.

This week, I worked with Hans Moscicke. He taught me all of the different types of real estate. I learned about whole sailing, flipping, agent, commercial, and renting, but all of them have a downside, except for what he does: seller financing. Seller financing is a real estate arrangement where the seller acts as the lender and provides financing to the buyer for purchasing the property. Instead of the buyer obtaining a traditional mortgage from a bank, they make payments directly to the seller over an agreed-upon period.

Many people can’t meet the requirements for a bank loan even if they make enough income, for example, if they are self-employed. People who do seller financing buy houses that are low-interest, for example, 3%. Someone who does not meet a loan requirement will then purchase the house from them, and they charge them, for example, 6% interest. So the seller financer will be paying the bank 3% and keeping the other 3% monthly.

As I said before, all other forms of real estate have a downside except for seller financing because you do not have to manage any properties. You are solely acting as the bank and getting paid monthly. If something breaks on the house, it is not your responsibility to fix and pay for it, as a renter would need to.

Right now, Hans is trying to add properties from Texas to his portfolio. He gave me a spreadsheet with the address and seller names of different houses that may be possible leads, and I needed to look up the houses on Zillow.com and find the days on the market, the first and last name of the agent, their phone number, and the status of the house, for example, Off Market, Under Contract, Pending, or Active. An issue that we ran into was that the phone numbers on Zillow were sometimes the office phone numbers, so I had to go back and look up all of the agents on Google and find their mobile numbers. In the past two days, I went through 275.

So far this week I’ve continued my regular deskwork (scanned more documents and formatted articles for newsletters) and I’ve also worked at some of the properties. Today I cleaned up the windows and lamps at a property we’re renting out and washed the front of the house as well. We also finished putting up the railing at the other house.

Here is what my week has been like so far:

Monday 4/8:

On Monday I stopped by school to turn my prom money in (if you haven’t turned yours in, yet then you should!) and then I also came to talk to Dr. Urbano, Mrs. Bryan, and a little with Mr. Waide! I also got to say hi to Mary and Lily, which was so nice. The rest of Monday my mom and I watched the eclipse with my Aunt Patty (we listened to Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” of course, but I forgot to play “I Wear My Sunglasses at Night,” because I was too distracted by George Michael and Rod Stewart songs!). My aunt made potstickers, which I had no self control and legit I think I ate 20 of them. I don’t know for sure because I didn’t want to keep count, but it was definitely a lot, and we watched “Girls 5 Eva” (which I highly recommend) and I did some writing for my substack. Oh also, on Sunday I met Hali at Bread Co., which was so fun and we talked for like three hours! While I was waiting for her, Kristina Fulton walked in, so I also chatted with her for a while!

Tuesday 4/9:

On Tuesday, I helped set up for museum babies and worked the kids clubhouse until noon. The museum babies program is just so sweet. We lay out rugs for the kiddos to sit on with their parents and we also have these squishy, stackable toys for them to play with and those see through scarves that we used to use in gym for sharks and minnows, does anyone else remember that? After museum babies, we had our storytelling program, but the babies are also welcome to stay! Andy read today and he did a really good job. This weeks theme was spring for the babies and transportation for the older kiddos. He is very interactive and he also wear a headband with flowers on it, so bonus points for that. The headband reminded me sooo much of something Mr. Waide would do to celebrate spring! This weeks batch of kids were possibly the cutest I have seen. After story time, the kids did a craft, which was to make their own steering wheel and decorate it. Then I just sat in the clubhouse and cleaned up and played with kids. There were a brother and a sister who I played with for quite a bit there names were Rio and Archie, and they were so sweet! Rio kept handing me blocks to keep and I showed her our reading nook which is like a carved out portion of a tree. Archie built a castle with the magnetic blocks and told me about how he is kind of scared of monsters, and forgets that they aren’t real, but when he remembers he doesn’t feel scared anymore and is happy. SO CUTE! After they cleared out, the whole clubhouse was pretty quiet and I was kinda bored, so I did some coloring pages and thought about food. There were two families who hung out in the clubhouse, while their kids played and they chatted about private schools. If I was braver, I would have gone over there and bragged about TFS, but I was a chicken, OK? I kept trying to talk myself into it, but I just couldn’t do it, like they were talking so much, and it felt invasive and awkward. I am rep-ing a “I heart TFS” button on my lanyard, though, so if anyone asks I can be like, “Well, let me know tell you what TFS is…” As I was walking out of the clubhouse, I stopped to check my phone (no weeding!!!) and look at my schedule for the rest of the day. There was a man checking out the clubhouse and I said hi and he asked if I worked there. I said yes, and it explained I was a volunteer on my senior project, and said I was planning on becoming a history major. He asked me what kind of history, and I said I wasn’t sure yet, but I would love to be a historical writer. Then he started talking about how he is a historical writer and his current book is on how the Basque (a certain group of Spanish people) actually helped to discover and found colonies in the U.S. It was all very interesting, but by this time I was hungry, had to use the bathroom badly, and my feet were killing me because when I stand for more than two hours in my converse they start to hurt, I’ve gotten used to the pain (figures, since I have to deal with the daily pain of being a woman in a man’s world, shake my head, they just don’t wanna see a girlboss winning), but I just wanted to go on my break! Anyways, I said that was all very cool, but I had to run and it was nice to meet him. I felt like George Michael in one of his hit post Wham songs that I can’t write the title of here, but it was released in 1987 and actually has three parts to it. This little diddy was so inappropriate that MTV refused to play it until Michael and his team convinced them to air it, but by today’s standards it would be considered very tame, but by Danny Alt’s (my father’s) standards it is still considered very raunchy when I dance to it in our living room, which causes him to say things like “George Michael ain’t much of a man, he’s a sissy-boy!” This then causes my so-called liberal and highly accepting aunt to join in and throw Harry Styles and Rod Stewart in the pot of ridicule as well just because they are in touch with their feminine side and don’t adhere to traditionally masculine stereotypes! Sorry for the rant, but I felt like George Michael because of the lyric “every man’s got his patience, but here’s where mine ends,” then he talks about something he wants, but in that moment I did not want what he wanted, I wanted to go use the bathroom, sit down, and eat my lunch! After lunch, I got to listen to this graduate students talk on black Missourians in STEM, except it wasn’t an in person talk it was over zoom, whomp, whomp. I hate zoom, to be honest. It was interesting, but I was also kind of bored so halfway through I went and bought myself some snacks from the vending machine. I got doritos and a diet pepsi, which is honestly better than diet coke. Then I saw they had canned orange juice, I thought, “mmmm, why not!” and inserted $1 within the machine, but it cost $2, what the flip?! I still bought it, but kind of a rip off! All the other canned beverages are $1, why is the orange juice special? The talk finished at 3:00, I was ready to go do something else and then this old lady approached me. I did not feel like talking and when I saw her walking over, I though, “oh, boy!” and the George Michael lyric played again. But I persevered because I CAN DO HARD THINGS. Anyways, her name was Mariane Brickner and she is originally from New York, but has worked all over as a wildlife photographer and was interested in giving a talk at the museum and when I mentioned I was in highschool, she was also interested in coming to our school to talk. So, she was pretty cool, but I was so done with social interaction for the day, honestly. Kat didn’t have anything else for me to do, and I didn’t want to work on writing, so I went to the coloring STL exhibit and colored for a while, very relaxing. I feel like a wipe board like that would be really cool for the kids at school as a brain break / reward for working. I think the upperschoolers could design an outline like places / items around TFS and then anyone could color it! Tuesday night, I also dyed my hair darker, and now I really look like a young version of my mom!

Wednesday 4/10:

For Wednesday, I spent the first half of my day at the clubhouse. I love working the clubhouse because the kids are just so cute. I met two brothers and their sister, Truman, Penny, and Henry. Henry was the baby and Truman told me they call him “Chubby” how cute! There was also this little girl, Lily, who was so adorable and her mom was gorgeous who played with an older girl with red hair and whose favorite color was red, she was incredibly sweet and gentle with Lily! There was also a little girl who had forehead bangs and a Peppa Pig shirt that I sat next to and colored with her and her mom. Then the rest of my day will be spent at a presentation on having and de-escalating difficult conversations. I think the whole Alt-Schuba family could listen into this! I tried to make this post a bit shorter, since I am working Thursday, Friday, and the gala on Saturday, so I imagine I will have a lot to say, but honestly it didn’t work! My mom said that someone told her one of my infringements and proof that I am just such a troublemaker is that I take up too much space on the blog or write too much in general! This person will not be named, but all I have to say is so sorry, but I am going to keep writing! Also, I put this post into a google doc, and it totaled to be about two pages, so if you think that’s long, I can’t imagine what you will think when you see a book! I am just kidding around and making jokes, but on a more serious note, it’s not inconsiderate, it’s called being creative, and you know what, I actually do all of my writing myself, I don’t have some robot do it for me, so if you don’t like it, you don’t have to read it. While in the clubhouse today I read a book called, “She Persisted” about thirteen American women who were pioneers in various fields. One of them, Nellie Bly, a writer who posed as a sweatshop worker and a mentally ill patient risked her life to expose and advocate for the humane care for workers and patients, once said (this is so “Criminal Minds,” to add in the ‘once said,’ bit, if you know what I am referencing I love you) “I have never written a word that did not come from my heart. I never shall.” AMEN, SISTER!!!! Like Nellie, I have never written a word that did not come from my heart and I never will. To me it is a crime shame to not use your God given brain and share your thoughts with the world. But I will also add this, my brother and I who are both quite skilled writers, agree that people nowadays are just lazy and don’t want to read things that are even a page long, so if this is the case with you, then I am going to suggest you step out of your comfort zone and challenge yourself to read my posts! And I will add this, I don’t write for other people, sure I want others to enjoy it and I want to know what they think about my writing– the good and the bad–, but even if no one wanted to listen, even if no one had any interest, even if no one cared at all, or even if no one ever read my stories, I wouldn’t care because at the end of the day, the reason I write is for myself. There are thoughts, and stories, and memories inside of me that are begging to be let out, and I will be damned (is this considered cursing? I feel like this and the word “hell” are a completely different ballpark than other curse words.) if I don’t let them out This isn’t to be rude, I just don’t get how this is a compliant? I am sharing my love for writing? Oh, the horror! Lock her up, folks! She’s crazy, she’s a rebel without a cause, she’s a wild child, she’s a cherry bomb! Somebody cue up “Bad Reputation,” by Joan Jett! Uh no, I am a girl with a notebook and pen and a laptop with lots of ideas in her head that are begging to be let out and shared and enjoyed by others 🙂 I am also working on writing a collection of linked short stories based on my journal and free writing entries that span over middleschool and highschool. My idea is to keep them sort of raw and free written and dated. Anyways, I am gonna submit them to the University of Iowa’s (Go Hawkeyes, RIP Caitlyn Clark, I love you, but you play lazy defense, and honestly it is understandable when you have an offensive game like you, but still…) short story contest. There are two awards given out and the winners get to be published by the Iowa University press. This is a big deal because Iowa University is very well known for their English and creative writing departments. They run a graduate school called their “writers workshop” where writers live together and you just work on your writing and get critiqued by other writers. It’s pretty cool and I think the acceptance rate for it is only like 2%, but if I got in, I would go in a heartbeat. I know it’s a long shot for me to win and get published, but I figure I might as well try, LOL. Anyways, my plan to popularize my books though, would be to go on “The Bachelor” as soon as I turn 21, unless I have a boyfriend I really love by then, but if my adult life is anything akin to my highschool love life, there may be no boyfriend, the love life may be non-existent, LOL. I would be the perfect contestant I would be well rounded and smart since I would be a writer / historian, I would have worked in a museum, and also I may possibly be able to add aerobics instructor to that list, how perfect is that? I am competitive in nature, I would be really good on a karoeke, sports, or truth or dare date, and I know that show inside and out. Any angle the producer would want me to play up, I would gladly play, and I think I could make it to Hometowns (4 people) or Fantasy Suites (3 people) or even the final 2, but I don’t think I would win, and I wouldn’t want to because I want to give the audience a raw heartbreak scene. Then I would write a book about my experience on the show and sell even more books, mwahahhahaha!!! I may identify as mostly a communist, but this is the captialist in me, baby.

On Tuesday, Mr. Miller said that I could look through Case Net for the Missouri Court of Appeals and pick a case I’d like to watch in court sometime this week or next. The website itself is very unorganized and challenging to navigate, and I had to leave early for an appointment, so this took most of my day. Most of the cases are civil/criminal which tend to be more exciting than the cases the litigators in this office work on. The case descriptions for most of these cases are about 50 pages long, so I read through a few to decide which I’d like to see. One case had to do with a 9-year-old boy who had autism and ADHD along with a plethora of health problems. He saw multiple doctors who prescribed him different medicines, all of which his mother had possession of. The boy was in and out of consciousness and not acting himself and the doctors couldn’t figure out why. Eventually, the hospital took his mother into custody claiming she was poisoning the boy with medications he wasn’t supposed to be on. In 2017, she was sentenced to 25 years in prison for first-degree assault (count 1), and first-degree endangering the welfare of a child (count 2). She is now appealing to the court claiming multiple holes in the prosecutor’s arguments along with misuse of the term “poisoned.”