Senior Projects

Monday – Shadow Chris at LifeTime

1. Nothing much.
2. Chris had a one on one meeting with Danielle, one of Chris’s team member. I don’t think I will share Danielle’s details and her struggles. I’ll just say she got 2 kids and she is currently in the process of starting a family. And she’s very hardworking, enterprising; she’s just working on finding the balance point between work and family.
3. Chris brought up a topic about wages. “Wages represent both the value of an individual’s time and the level of responsibility they bear in their role, with compensation reflecting skills, experience, and market demand. Essentially, wages serve as a measure of the worth of time and responsibility in the modern workforce, determining how much individuals are compensated for their contributions.” – ChatGPT.

Wednesday – Same thing

1. I forgot to bring my car keys so I arrived at LifeTime around 11:15.
2. Chris had a national call at 11:30. Nothing much.
3. LifeTime is gonna force people to download and use their app in order to check in with the QR code. It’s a win-win because it saved Manuel labor and I guess it doesn’t hurt for members to download an app.
4. Some other stuff
5. Chris had a confidential meeting then.
6. I finally took some pictures.
7. I went to the cafe and had a burger that costs 11 dollars; it tastes good. Markush the cafe guy gave me a discount: it was supposed to be 14 dollars. The burger also comes with an orange and he helped me cutting it. Awesome guy for real.
8. Then I talked to Jamie the operational manager. We had a nice talk.
9. Then I left around 1:40

Thursday, Friday, Tuesday – Coursera

I’m so far behind. I guess I don’t really care now because 90% of my presentation is gonna be about LifeTime. I’ll still try my best to finish it tho.

I met my host family brother, and Chris’s son Jay on Tuesday, actually I met the whole family. Jay is going to China on May 9th and I’ll arrive at Beijing China on may 29th. We will travel together for a month and I’ll skateboard for the rest of the time.

Monday – Shadow Chris at LIfeTime

1. Regular towels folding.
2. Chris’s meeting.

Wednesday – Shadow Chris at LIfeTime

1. Regular towels folding from 10-11am. I only folded 1 hour because I felt bored and left.
2. Chris had a confidential meeting so I have to leave.
3. I went to the cafeteria and bought a turkey burrito bowel even I brought lunch.
4. I talked to Markush the staff. (possibly the wrong name) He’s cool and I tried his favorite drink and I gave it a 7 out of 10.
5. Then I asked him about that last Wednesday I saw his peer holding a plate of samples. He said those are pre-workout mix drink. And that explained why he didn’t make me try because he knows I’m not there to workout.
6. I wonder if people actually buy it or not and he said they do. Because those who goes to LifeTime don’t usually struggle with that amount of money. On LifeTime presentation, the median household income is 145,000 $, which is upper-middle or upper income level.
7. Then I found out LifeTime has their own magazine called Experience Life, includes basically everything related to health. There are tips for how to build your own workout plan, diet…… Examples: https://experiencelife.lifetime.life/article/6-exercises-for-a-healthy-spine/ https://experiencelife.lifetime.life/article/sleep-sweat-repeat-4-workouts-you-could-do-on-repeat/ https://experiencelife.lifetime.life/article/boost-testosterone-naturally/
8. I saw a YT video on asking LifeTime members what they do for living and why they choose LIfeTime(179$/month). I have not finished that video yet.

Tuesday, Thursday, Friday – Coursera

1. It went alright.

This is gonna be a short one. So as you guys know I left off on Tuesday! now its Wednesday my last day there. It was also one of the volunteers last day too. I tend to love babies I don’t know why, but the last day there was a four month old baby that was so cute a pretty much held the whole day. I also organized some paper by color and put it in the closet, as well as organize some games for the kids and through out broken or old games. The staff really enjoyed me being there. I really learned a lot these past three weeks and also had lots of fun with the kiddos! They made me a card too, my heart melted! Now onto promise Christian academy!

Hey everyone! This was a crazy weekend for me! So I have to catch everyone up on my week! On Monday, a new group of kids came in: some toddlers and some older kids. The day was the same as every day. This group of kids had the most energy of the group I have seen so far. We had some nicknames now. I don’t like to pick favorites, but I love them all. we had some nicknames. There was a two-year-old. We called him chicken. He was the cutest two-year-old ever! For some reason, the kids that week only wanted to sit in my lap and would fight over who got to sit there! I felt so special, I’m not going to lie. On Tuesday, the same as the usual routine, it is good to keep the kids on a strict routine to keep them stimulated. Part 2 will be my experience on my last day at the crisis Nursery! Stay tuned

On Friday I had the opportunity to tour the detention center connected to the courthouse. There are four units I believe: one for girls and the rest for boys. Right now there are only 25 kids there but they can hold up to 100. When kids are brought in for a crime, they have to be given a hearing at max three days after they arrive. The hearings typically determine what is in the best interest of the juvenile and the community to determine how long they should stay, or depending on the crime committed, until they have trial. The units themselves have the rooms with beds, a toilet, a sink, and a pillow and blanket. They have a TV in the unit as well as a bench area. If the children do well in detention they are rewarded with a night in the game room where there is ping pong among other games. The tour was very interesting and I’ll elaborate in my presentation, but unfortunately I couldn’t take any pictures inside.

Yesterday I was given the address of one of the properties they are working on right now, and I needed to look and houses in the area that have sold recently that are close to how the house is going to be when it’s done. On zillow.com I drew a circle around the area where the house is put in the specs of the house, and saw different houses around that have sold recently. You can not see how much the house sold for on zillow so I needed to send the address of the place to Siu, and she gave me the price. After I got a few similar houses I averaged them out by their square footage and made an estimate on how much we should list the house that is being renovated right now. 

Today I built some cabinets for one of the houses they are working on.

These are a few past projects that they have flipped:

Friday, 5/3:

My Friday started out like usual at the Kids Clubhouse for storytelling. The theme was the World’s Fair, so we had a book about ice cream and the olympics. There was a really sweet little boy, about four or five years old, who sat next to me and was very enthusiastic about listening to the stories and singing the songs. The kids also made a ferris wheel craft out of cupcake liners. We had a lot of visitors today and a lot of people who were curious about the clubhouse whether they visited it or not. I worked the desk so I was in charge of stamping hands and taking zip codes, as well as giving directions to other visitors. I worked the clubhouse until noon and then went on my lunchbreak. Now, after my lunch break we had a *VERY* special group coming in! Can you guess who it is? It’s The Fulton School Junior U.S. History Class with Mrs. Bryan!!! I was free from noon until 5:00 so I got to stop by and explain different things to the group.

OK, also I am not gonna go in depth with this since I have a 500 word limit, but “Challengers” was an AMAZING movie. The trailers did not even do it justice to how good it actually was. It was just really fun, but I was correct in my assumption as Zendaya was NOT phenomenal. Was she good? Yes, but phenomenal? No. I just feel like there is no emotion in her performances in the case of this it did work because her character, Taishi, is supposed to be cold and because of this flat acting her performances really make me feel nothing, they’re honestly kind of boring. I think a much better, more emotional actress, who actually deserves an Emmy (“Oh no, she didn’t just say that!” – the Zendaya fan club, right now) is Sophie Nelisse for her role as teen Shauna in “Yellowjackets” now that moved me to tears. The real stars of “Challengers” are Josh O’Connor as Patrick Zweig and Mike Faist as Art Donaldson, but Zendaya’s Taishi is completely necessary because she is the catalyst (oh yeah, I do know STEM stuff!) for the men’s rivalry, without her there is no story. If you would like to read my full review and thoughts on the movie, you can check out my Substack. I will say it was so good that my mom and I plan on going to the theaters on Saturday to watch it again.

Thursday, 5/2:

I started my Thursday at the Key Bistro Cafe. It was pretty busy and we had smaller staff then usual, so it was hectic! I had my first frustrated customer. They weren’t angry, but they were frustrated on the food wait time, which I completely understand because we have all been there before– you’re hungry, you’ve placed your order, you’re really hungry, and you keep seeing other people get their food, as a very hungry person, it definitely gets to me, too! Thankfully, she understood, and their food came out shortly after I spoke with them, so that was good! One thing that has stressed me out is that if I would have to deal with not just a person who was a little frustrated, I can handle that, but a person who is like really angry, now that scares me! Today must have been just my luck because there was a customer who was quite angry and actually threatened not to pay their bill— they bought probably about $50 worth of food and drinks since they were there with two others. I referred them to Char at the Express Cafe, even though they were in the sit down portion, normally you can’t do this, but we made an exception. The customer then said something pretty snarky, but I just let it go and continued my shift, there is really no point in arguing with a person like that because they won’t understand. Later there was a really nice woman who said that I made her experience wonderful, so that was nice to hear! I also got a surprise visit from Ashtyn Fry (used to go to TFS) and her family, so I got to chat with them, which was very cool. From 2:00 to 3:00 I helped cut out paper school buses from a K-12 craft. Then from 3:00 to 5:00, Hanna gave me a list of locations to take photos of that offer accessibility for disabled people. Next I will put them in a Google Doc with a caption description and then they will go into Hanna powerpoint presentation. At 5:00 to 6:00 I was a gallery attendant at Coloring STL then from 6:00 to 7:00 I worked the World’s Fair gallery and talked at length with a visitor about the World’s Fair. That was pretty cool, since normally I don’t get to do that and if I want to become an official tour guide I have to go through more training and there just wasn’t enough time for it on my senior project, but I would love to do it in the summer. Then I just got to enjoy the concert. It was a Chaka Khan tribute, if you don’t know who that is, you are probably playing yourself, do you know the song “I’m Every Woman”? Because if you do then you sort of know her because she sings that song, but it was also covered by Whitney Houston. IT WAS PACKED!!! There were definitely like 2,000 to 3,000 people there. What was cool is that it was all kinds of people: young and old, men and women, etc. I was pleasantly surprised by the concert because I wasn’t sure if I would like it, but the music was very fun. Since this post is long and I don’t want to take up too much space on the blog because that would just be inconsiderate of me, I will be making a separate post about Friday since it should be an interesting day!

This week, I worked with Siu and Karim Salem. They are both real estate investors and agents. They were first investors, but they did not want to pay agent fees whenever they were selling a house, so they decided to become agents. They mainly buy trashed and old houses, re-model them, and then sell them or rent them. They mainly focus on the Hispanic community because they are bilingual. The niche gives them an upper hand over everyone else. They also represent mainly Hispanics as their agent when buying or selling a house. They have three projects going on right now. Siu and Karim don’t do the remodeling; they hire people, so every day, I visited them to make sure that everything was going well with the project. They try to finish a flip in three weeks. Karim and I had to go out and get flooring, windows, and lights for the houses one of the days.

This is the insides of two of the houses being remodeled right now:

It’s been a light week, mostly making scans, copies, working on newsletters, finding properties, and meetings, which is a very good thing because I’m mega sick right now. At first I thought it was just my allergies acting up but it’s been three days now and I’m only feeling worse… Luckily my employers have been very understanding, though this will likely be my only post this week.