Senior Projects

So, I’ve decided that I will post three times a week, maybe not every week, but I will post a plan during the weekend for the upcoming week, then post midweek, and at the end of the week, so they’re not as long all at once. I always have Mondays off, since the Museum is closed, originally I was going to work at May’s Place a vintage store owned by Katie May in St. Louis, but since I am already meeting the 30 hours a week requirement and sometimes going over it, I decided to drop this, since it’s not really helping me with my major or future career, I just thought it would be cool. So, those are my executive, no cap decisions.

This is what my coming week will look like: Tuesday, I will have museum babies, a daytime program, and then a facilitated dialogue. These are like discussions with the staff about internal runnings within the museum, I may actually get to lead one of these in the future! Wednesday, I will be at the Soldier’s Memorial Museum where I have orientation and then I will work as the desk greeter. Thursday, I will be at the Key Bistro Restaurant as a greeter, then either in the clubhouse or Soldier’s Memorial, and then I will be working the night even. Finally, Friday I have storytelling at the kids’ clubhouse, then I will spend the rest of the day either in the Key Bistro, SMM, or the Clubhouse, and just helping out wherever it’s needed.

I am really looking forward to the rest of the project and I could see myself doing this as a career. I like it because you’re on your feet and get to move around, which is refreshing compared to being at school, where you have to spend so much time sitting. I also feel like at school you are always being given work to do like even if it’s just busy work, where as at work if I finish everything I just get some downtime and get to take a break before the next new thing in my shift. Also, I went down a rabbit hole ahead of starting senior projects and looked way back on the senior projects blog to see what other kids did. And something that both Natasha Douglass and Elliot Voekel said, and a lot of others too, was that they were really surprised with how adults were so impressed with teenagers or interns just doing basic professional things like being on time, shaking your hand, introducing yourself, not being on your phone, etc. and I have noticed this also. At the career fair, I spoke to two women at a booth who help run an elementary school called Atlas School. I gave them my contact information and I would consider working with them, and I had mentioned that I was 17 in case that meant I wouldn’t be able to work there. And the woman said I still could, and that it was refreshing to see a highschooler who was so mature. I guess I can see why people would be impressed with this because there are some just downright cruel people in the world, so when someone is polite, understanding, and just willing to help it can be a breath of fresh air. In other news, I have also started a Substack blog to post my writing on because there is a writer’s position available at the museum that I may apply to this summer and figured that would be more professional than my Wattpad account, LOL. If you care to follow them my Wattpad is @bebobwaffles_123 and my substack is @jollyranger867, I post pretty often and if you want to discuss any of my articles or stories I would love to. If I get enough subscribers I can also be paid from Substack, which is super cool. I also plan on setting up an Amazon Kindle account where you could buy my stuff and I would get a partial commission, I just haven’t set it up yet. And last update, I am planning on trying to set my brother up with Elena from the museum because she is single, super cute, smart, funny, and sweet, and I think they’d make a good couple.

This week at McCarthy Leonard & Kaemmerer, I was introduced to everyone in the office and given various projects from different attorneys that worked with different types of cases. Over the past five days I have been working on case summaries for two Supreme Court cases, paperwork for the purchase of a car dealership, reading a memorum of understanding for a company and its ties to the union of United Farm Workers, and other office tasks. The supreme court cases have been the most interesting by far, and reading through them and learning the correct terminology has been the most useful to me. The first case is about the third party exception to the rule that businesses have no duty to protect their invitees from the action of third-party persons while on their property, and it’s actually a pretty good story, but they made me sign three different confidentiality agreements so I’m scared to write about it. The second case is about medical malpractice and the two-year statue of limitations. Overall, I’m learning a lot.

My week started off Tuesday through Friday. I helped manage the pro shop by first taking inventory of all the new items that come in every couple of weeks with Curt Goss, the merchandiser of the year. I then helped Golf pro-Adam fold the clothing professionally, adequately mix and match different pieces in their collections, and unload shipments of golf balls. I also did inventory and put them in their correct spots. I got a tour of the offices I hadn’t seen before, even though I am a member, which was pretty neat. This was on Tuesday; on Wednesday, I learned how to edit videos of the golf pros for the Wednesday weekly update for the members with Video Editor Jessica Fox. Then, on Thursday, I got some tape off a wall that hadn’t come off for a while and became an assistant for golf pro Ryan Martin as he taught lessons outside on the golf range. Today, Friday, was the biggest day of the week so far because of the nice warm weather, and about 270 members came to play golf today. I helped with outside management, guiding members to their specific holes in the course and assisting with any needs of the pros and members. I went out on the course with golf pro-Brooks Morris and ensured the members had a good pace of play, which meant making sure they were playing not too fast or too slow to avoid people waiting or finishing too early. I had a great first week!

Yesterday night I experienced Holy Week. I saw one of the processions and witnessed the ceremony. There are many that go on throughout the day but we watched the last one which is one of the most famous. It was 1am when it passed us. For this one, “ La procesión del silencio” all of the city lights turned off and people remained silent. In this one there was no music but a drum, which only happens in this specific procession, and once the statue, called paso, passed us there where people with chains doing their penitence. 

Today we visited Sacromonte, a village where people live in caves on the side of the mountains. There are different houses for different uses like a blacksmith, sowing, farm animals, and normal housing. Their community also was the main promoter of flamingo. 

Thursday:

Thursday, I worked from 12:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. When I first arrived, I packaged up invitations for one of the museum’s upcoming events. I would fold cards, put them in envelopes, and then glue them shut. I think I did this to over 100 invitations (I am not kidding)! Even though a lot of people think it’s boring, I liked it because it was just very easy and sort of gives your mind a break. It was similar to working at the thrift store for community service at school. The second time we went, Mrs. Bryan said something really smart and true and it was like, “You spend all of highschool and college learning these things and you can’t really see a clear cut goal with them, even though they’re paying off. So, with something like this it’s just really simple and there’s a clear cut goal, which makes it really satisfying,” well said, Mrs. Bryan! That morning I also got to meet Ray. Ray is retired and has been volunteering for five years. He is super cool and we talked a lot about my senior project and my future career paths. He is preparing to give his third gallery talk next week on the Dred Scott case. At about 1:15 I finished up the scavenger hunt paper from yesterday and took a bit of a break. Then I got to tour the kids clubhouse with Andy. After that, I got to meet Ryan and Julie. I didn’t talk much with Ryan because he had to run, but I talked a lot with Julie, who also works in the kids clubhouse. She is really cool and asked me different stuff about where I go to highschool, what college I’m going to, senior projects, and what I want to do for a career later in life. She also has some totally sick tattoos. Then for the rest of the afternoon, I took a tour of the kids clubhouse and had some training for my work there Friday with Andy. He was super helpful and nice as well. After that, I had a little downtime than I toured and met with Victoria who works as a data analyst and collector for the museum, so it’s likely I will help her do some surveys in the coming weeks. Lastly, I spent the last portion of my shift helping out at the Thursday Night event from 5:00 – 8:00. Maggie who works in the kids department and for Thursday night gave us the run down. Basically me, and two other volunteers, Tyler and Sophia, helped on the floor level, then greeted guests and handed out surveys. Then we got to watch a talk from authors Richard Rothstein and Leah Rothstein (they are father and daughter) on their book “Just Action: How to Challenge Segregation Enacted Under The Color of Law” and Richard’s solo book “The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America” it was cool to hear about these books since they are pretty big in the history/academia world and it was cool that I was able to know a lot of terms and events from taking U.S. History. They had a Q&A and I really wanted to ask about what it’s like working as a historical scholar/writer and if they have multiple jobs, how they got published, etc. but I wanted to give the opportunity for guests to ask questions and we ran short on time so I didn’t get to. I then thought I would talk to Leah at the book signing, but the line was super long and I was tired so I headed home for the night. It was also cool that I got to talk with Sophia a lot because she is on a research project at the museum and is a junior at Kirkwood Highschool and she was super fun.

Friday:

Friday morning, I finished packing some envelopes from the other day. Then I headed over to the kids’ clubhouse at 9:15 to set up for their story telling program. The story telling program is targeted at young kids and is hosted every Friday morning. Then from 10:30-12:00 we had the actual story time. It was super fun and I got to work with Julie and Maggie, and then also met and worked with a different Emily and Elena, as well as, meet Rachel and Lindsey. After story time and the craft, I spent about an hour at the clubhouse cleaning up and helping families out. Then I worked from 12:00-2:00 at the Key Bistro, the museum’s restaurant with Pierre, Anthony, and Garth. I sat at the front desk and gave menus out. I also brought people drinks and cleaned up after they were done. I got a free meal out of this and I had a burger and fries, which were really good. During the last portion of the day, I was going to help out Kat and Eric (a student at Maryville University), but Kat was out sick and it is better with in person training so I just got to explore the museum. I did get to briefly say hi to Eric, though. Sorry, that these are longer posts and I am tempted to just do three a week so it isn’t all so much (but what else could you expect from the girl who wrote over 25 pages for her research paper, and a 20+ page scripted draft of a “Freaks and Geeks” reboot in a single night?!) even though I only have to do two a week. Some other cool life updates are that I’ve made myself a Substack account to post my writing on, which I will link later. I’ve also been working on writing up a resume for jobs during the summer, getting my housing application together for Webster, which has been a mess! And then lastly, I have recently become obsessed with dance and aerobics for cardio because I don’t like just running that much and I wanted to add in cardio with my strength training. It is so much fun, I dance for like 30 minutes two or three times each day to various up beat 80s and 2000s songs. I think my dad is horrified because he told my mom, “I’ve seen so much of me in her these last few weeks,” and I said “Oh, did you dance and do aerobics in your living room, too?” He replied, “No, I didn’t do any of that goofy S***,”(I am blurring out this EXPLICIT WORD, however, he said the real deal…). I may want to become an aerobics instructor as a side gig because it would legit be so fun! I also think it would be cool because it totally juxtaposes my scholar dreams and also if I would want to be a contestant on “The Bachelor” (also something I would seriously consider. I could promote my writing and books, go pretty far, but probably not be picked and give a devastating heartbroken speech) that would make me so legendary!

Pictures from Wednesday-Friday:

The first week was a lot of learning experiences. I spent it running around 6 different subways meeting the managers as well as fixing maintenance issues at those stores. One example of that was electrical issues in the walk-in coolers. There are 12 subways so I will be at the others next week. The first week was mainly an introduction week learning how to take inventory as well as how to manage the money within those stores.

On these days I continued my project and got involved in their daily meetings(stand up) and their larger meetings with their customer. Although not involved directly with everything, I have learned a great deal just by listening and intaking the information that is being passed along. This Thursday I got to sit in on a meeting with the customer and he introduced me to what he does and the project itself. Later this Thursday the lead for the project went over more specifics of what they do for me to get a better understanding. I have furthered my separate project transferring my code into a different format(node.js). My first week has been more insightful than I initially anticipated and I am very happy with the community and the people around me.

My first few days I started at OmniFederal, which is a private contracting company with the NGA. They mostly work with government clients on projects. They have different teams for each project and I was placed on the Ronin project. The first few days I learned about the company and what they do as well as started my own project that will utilize some of their principles in their project to get me up to speed with what they are working on. The environment has been very welcoming and I have learned more than I initially anticipated.

This week at Riezman Berger I had the opportunity to see two court cases. On Tuesday morning, I followed a litigation attorney into court for a case management discussion with the prosecuting attorney and judge. Luckily, both the lawyers were okay with me going back to the judges chambers with them where I got to meet Hon. Richard Stewart. In the meeting, they settled on mediating in 90 days to try to come to a compromise. If the mediation doesn’t settle anything, they’ll follow up with a jury trial in December. The case itself has to do with a man moving into a neighborhood where his next door neighbor’s three dogs bark their heads off. The man called the cops multiple times on the dogs and ended up filing a lawsuit to get the women to get rid of two out of three of their dogs. The attorney at Riezman Berger is the defendants attorney and he is trying to settle the case without costing his client too much money and not have the lawsuit result in sending the women’s dogs to the pound.

Today I went to the the Alhambra. It was originally constructed as a small fortress by the Muslims but was later converted to a royal palace. Alhambra has many gardens that are loctaed around and in the fortress walls. Today they still grow they same crops that would have been grown at Alhambra years ago. 

In almost every room in the Alhambra there is a fountain. The water was always running because they believed if the water stopped moving then the water would go bad. The constant running water creates a peaceful sound and environment. They are also many large bodies of water because they believed that the bigger the size of water the more power that you have. 

The walls throughout the whole complex have designs on them. They are not individually carved, they used a mold to achieve the look. Stars with eight sides are represented throughout the whole complex as well, on the walls and on the sealing. There is a saying that you are in the seventh heaven which means that you are closest to God, because at eight you get to heaven. This is because if you draw an eight and turn it, it becomes an infinity symbol, representing purity.