Senior Projects

Last time I made a post, I was just about to go into my first day at the salon. So far, there hasn’t been a whole lot for me to do throughout the day. Legally, I’m not allowed to do anything related to the client, so I can’t mix color or touch the client at all. I’ve chatted a bit with the clients when the conversation between Mandy and them got interesting. I’m shadowing Mandy, and she’s a very laid back and genuine person. She has all sorts of stuff to talk about. I’ve done a lot of people watching, and learning how to be bored. For the first few hours of each day, I’ve ended up just sitting and watching stuff happen in the salon. It’s sort of boring, but sometimes it’s interesting to listen in on other people’s conversations. Mandy knows all of her clients super well and so they have a lot to talk about. Usually it’s interesting listening to their discussions, but I’ve had a lot of down time. I ended up spending a lot of time each day on my phone, at least in the morning, just because there’s nothing else for me to do. On Wednesday and Thursday, Mandy had time in between clients, so she asked me if there was anything I was interested in learning about. On Wednesday, Mandy got out a mannequin head and taught me how to curl hair with a three barrel curling iron. Thursday, I learned how to curl hair with a flat iron. On those days, I didn’t have anything to do in the afternoon either. On Friday, I learned how to fishtail braid, and I spent some time practicing braiding on the mannequin head (her name is Helen). Then, I switched from fishtail braiding to french braiding. I had no experience with french braids or fishtail braids, but I knew the basic principles, so I sort of taught myself how to french braid. I spent three and a half hours on Friday just doing tight little french braids down the mannequin’s hair. I almost got finished with a full head of braids, but I had a few left to do. On Saturday, about an hour into the day, I got out the mannequin and finished braiding. Then I went back and redid a few of the first braids I did just to clean them up. I’ve gotten a lot better at french braiding, but it’s still super hard to do on anyone who doesn’t have stick-straight hair. I ended up taking out the braids later in the day, and I straightened Helen’s hair. Something that I’ve noticed is that each day is pretty different from the next. Mandy knows all of her clients really well, so it’s a lot more fun to do work since you get to chat the whole time. Hairstyling is hard on your body though. Apparently almost every hairstylist has to have carpal tunnel surgery at some point, or even several times throughout their career. The pay for hairstyling is very reliant on how popular of a stylist you are. Mandy has a waitlist, so shes pretty popular. Some days, she will have only two or three clients who are doing lots of color work on their hair, but other days, like Friday, she will have five or six clients, most of which were just simple haircuts. Mandy also has full control over her schedule. She works wednesday through saturday, seven hours a day, but she handles all of her appointments and scheduling separately from the salon. I’m fairly sure that the salon gets a cut of what she makes, but for the most part, it seems like mandy works for herself. She does have two other jobs though, so I don’t think hairstyling is enough of a career to support a family and pets and whatnot. I’m super interested in the chemistry of hair dying, but thats not something Mandy can really teach me about because we don’t have enough time, plus, we cant dye any of the mannequins because they try to reuse them as many times as possible. Overall, it’s been going well. My next and final day of my project will be Wednesday, and then it’s time to present!

My schedule was basically the same for the second part of the week. I would be with Mrs. Camp in the mornings helping with whatever she needed for Social Studies. Ever Friday Mrs. Camp has a couple of the kids give presentations on their favorite celebrities. She will video their presentations and show them to the other classes on Monday. This week I learned more about Shawn Mendes! In the afternoons I either help Mrs. Camp or Mrs. Fuller with the kids in work experience. The kids either do work experience at Straubs or the school. I have really been enjoying my time with the kids and teachers!

Thursday was my last day at The Sheldon. There wasn’t a concert that day it was actually an award ceremony for a bunch of non-profit companies in the STL area. There was a networking event before the awards were given out. I helped make sure the networking event was going smoothly and all the staff had what they needed. At the end of the night I said goodbye to everyone I worked with. It was sad to leave but I am happy I got this experience.

My dad and I went on a sales drive. It was long and we drove around a lot. We had a few businesses on our checklist to just walk in and introduce ourselves. Other businesses we just saw and walked in. With things like a sales drive you have to be prepared for no. If someone thinks you’re trying to sell them something they’ll be on guard and almost won’t want to listen to you because they think that you’re a waste of their time and energy. Usually, if you just ask to talk to someone they will let you talk to someone. My dad and I probably knocked on the doors of 10 different businesses. We didn’t get a single definitive yes. We give every business our business card and will check up on them every once in a while. If the business has IT trouble later, then they might remember who we are and give us a call, which is the main idea behind the sales drive.

I finished the week by ensuring I had an accurate layout and understanding of how CSI worked with each new call; the lifecycle of one job. I thoroughly enjoyed working with Pam and Katie. I was also able to meet one of the technicians named Byron. The four of us laughed a lot and they all taught me about the company by sharing their specific perspective of their job. I enjoyed visiting Nashville even though I was not down town. I was able to see a family friend that lived there and ate a scrumptious burger with parmesan truffle fries. I would enjoy going back to see them all again.

This week I have been shadowing Mrs. Camp who is the social studies teacher at Promise. Promise is a school for kids with special needs. I help Mrs. Camp with her classes in the morning and each class is 27 minutes long. In the afternoon she helps with work experience. Work experience is where the kids will help do chores around the school like change the trash bags or clean the windows. For the kids 16 or older and who meet the qualification, they can go to Straubs grocery store and help bag groceries or help clean the store between 1-2:45. She had been awesome to shadow and I have absolutely loved being with the kids!

The other project we did this week was replacing a bathtub and installing a shower, and adding a railing to help the lady go outside to her backyard. The two best parts of this project was getting to help sledge hammer the cast iron bathtub and how amazing the lady was that we were helping. Sledge hammering was really cool and very loud! The other volunteers were older gentleman who were great to work with because they were teaching me different technics as we were working. We didn’t finish the project this week, but they will finish next week when I am gone. This was my last week at Restore and I had a great time and Rhiannon was a great person to shadow! ( I will definitely keep in touch for the summer internship programs!)

Today is my first day at salon prive. I’ll be here through saturday, and then again next week on wednesday. the chemistry behind hair products and hair dye is super complicated and interesting. i want to learn more about hairstyling. It’s a little bit boring here though. theres not really anything for me to do, and it’s not like I can talk to Mandy very much because she is busy with her client. I’m thinking a lot about whether or not I want to go to school for cosmetology. It’s really interesting, but I’m not sure when I’ll have time to go to cosmetology school. It’s only a 1-2 year course, but i would still need to become licensed in whatever state i want to practice in.

Lots to think about, and im super exhausted.

For the fifth week of my project I was with my uncle at our family real estate company. When I first arrived at the office my uncle had me do cold calls to try and find tenants for one of the companies buildings. My uncle gave me a list of around 50 possible tenants from another building that had a condemned parking garage. I called everybody on the list and was able to get one tenant to rent a space in the building.

For the next couple days we ended up touring lots of potential clients in potential renting areas. My uncle taught my how to interact with clients when doing a office tour.

still may need to do some work on them, but getting the other pages done are the priority at the moment. As they are, they will do.