Month: April 2018

On Friday my parents and I ventured to the coveted Elephant “Rocks”, I say this because not only are they breathtaking, but massive and spectacular. My favorite part was most certainly leaping from boulder to boulder as my mother shrieked with anger and fear, a jolly time I say. Anyway it is about two hours away from school and can easily be turned into a day long excursion. Just make sure you are safe and bring proper shoes because you could trip and actually die if your wore the “flops”.

I have two interviews in process and a whole bunch more scheduled for this week. After that I’ll transition into more photography-based stuff (with the same goal of showing commonality among humans).

Because geography is something the people I’ve interviewed so far have in common, I’m meeting up with a photojournalist this coming Saturday to take some pictures of places. Also, I’m planning on reaching out to a couple different community groups that will be able to give me information on community statistics and such.

Separately, I can’t help but worry about the project presentation. Do any of you guys have ideas (besides the usual PowerPoint)?

Not much new. Got to watch some cute kids and the house is full; it gets pretty hormonal but it’s cool. I’ve been helping the volunteer coordinator with their big donation drive (happens next week). If anyone wants to donate diapers or pull-ups, let me know!

Wednesday-

Rhonda went out of town today, so she hooked me up with a studio class at Ranken Technical College. They had a Shadow-a-Tech program for high schoolers interested in Engineering or Architecture in the morning, when we walked around and they showed us what their students were working on and what it was like to be a student there. Then later, we sat in on a four hour studio class and built some models and tried to help the students with their projects.

Thursday-

Rhonda set me up with a girl named Katy who works at the GreenGuys Landscape Architecture firm. Rhonda works with them a lot and she’s very close with them, so I sat in with Katy. She mostly sits in an office and works, but sometimes she goes around and takes pictures of sites, and measuring. Since spring is just starting up, they weren’t super busy yet, so there wasn’t much for me to do except listen to her talking on the phone to clients.

Today-

Today I helped present the Chile trip slideshow in the morning, but after that I went back to GreenGuys and sat in with Katy again, doing pretty much the same thing as yesterday.

Next week I start with Zoe’s uncle, who works at a commercial firm down Manchester.

I’m still in the “research” phase of my website project, but I’m close to the end and to moving on to the actual designing and uploading part. It’s been a really cool experience so far; this is definitely a versatile and useful skill to have. The beginning of designing the website is what’s been most fun so far, as I really like to identify what things need to be organized or marketed differently. Also, starting to pick photos and colors is fun.

I’ve been in pretty poor health this week, hence the title, so things have definitely been challenging as far as dealing with that and trying to stay on top of things. Luckily there’s Pedialyte and Gatorade to keep me alive for a while.

Loki is very happy. He’s thrilled about being allowed on the couch, and my temporary roommate keeps feeding him popsicles…

Today I’ll finish up instructing basketball here at TFS. I have the usual classes throughout the day, and then at 4:00 PM I’ll begin a basketball training session–run by Coach Frye, Coach Chelsea, and me–for 7th-12th graders.

This week has definitely given me a ton of experience and been super fun, but balancing the schedule with other work I’m doing (project related and non-project related) has been super tiring and challenging. I definitely have a firsthand respect for gym teachers and coaches like Sharma, Frye, Lucas, Elder etc–especially those juggling numerous responsibilities or jobs. It takes a lot of effort to keep calm, match, increase or decrease the energy level of your students, and gauge how your going to use your authority to balance safety, control, and intensity with goofiness and fun. That being said it’s definitely a rewarding, worthwhile pursuit and I think the importance of good coaches (who teach teamwork and philosophy as well as athletics), positive competition (teaching kids to channel energy and aggression into positive pursuits rather then encouraging them to suppress their own identities) is way undervalued in America and often tackled in the wrong ways–the TFS model for athletics has room for improvement but is optimal compared to others.

Today I worked with Mr. Elder, who gave feedback on what I’ve done so far and challenged me to really define what my project will do and what it’s all about. He also brought up some new points I hadn’t considered, as well as some resources I didn’t know were available.

Nothing to exciting recently; I’ve made friends with a lot of toddlers. The kitchen manager at the house gashed her leg open today so I’m in charge of lunch tomorrow. Yep! For 13 pregnant ladies, six toddlers, 1 10 yr old, and staff.

And so as all things, the week at Formlabs must come to an end.  Today I printed more and learned how to maintenance the Form 2 printers whilst bonding with my fellow work people.  The day had come to a close and, after many emotional handshakes, my week had ended at Formlabs.  I packed up and prepared myself for a week at Semco Plastics next week, following in the footsteps of the greats before me (Aka Liqi).

Today was very slow compared to the other days because two of the three marketing people were out all day on house calls.  Before a resident comes to visit Gambrill, the marketing department visits them in their home (or out at a restaurant) to give them the 4-1-1.

So, I sat in Debra’s office (the director of marketing) and answered the phone and took messages all day.  It was pretty boring because I did not get to walk around much and I was very isolated in her office.

The only exciting thing that happened was when a lady brought in a strange animal (called a Mara) that is native to Argentina.  Picture below: