On day one I was instructed to go to the neon warehouse to search for parts to “build a robot”. I found many things including golf clubs, aluminum bars, mannequin pieces, and working TVs. After my sketches had been completed I began the assembly process as you can see in the second picture.
I arrived at SAS at 9:30 this morning, 30 minutes early for my shift. I was very excited and a little nervous to see how my first day would go at my new internship. I sat in the lobby with excitement as my classmates arrived. Then Ms. Dougherty showed up and gave us a tour and I was really impressed at how nice everything was at SAS. Everything was really tidy and clean and comfortable. After a quick tour, I sat in on a 2-hour presentation about SAS’s purpose and this was very helpful to me. I learned that SAS can do almost anything with data with any company in the world. SAS even uses their software to help them decide how many metal sheets they would need to help Nepal rebuild and recover from an earthquake. Their work can literally be applied to any company or situation on earth that deals with any sort of data. However, at the end of the day, I only have a vague idea of what SAS does because it is so complex and there is so much to learn about it. Throughout these two weeks, I hope to become much more familiar with some of their software and the techniques sales members use to convince other companies to try out their software. After lunch, I shadowed Patty Hager, the director of mid-market presales at SAS. As soon as I met her I was rushed upstairs to her office and she immediately got to work, we had a busy afternoon together. She called her boss to let her check in on her to make sure she was staying busy and on track with her relations with other companies. Ms. Hager, I learned, deals even with sports teams such as the LA Kings. After her checkup with her boss, I went with Ms. Hager to a conference meeting with three other pre-sales workers that were on her team and five other people that had called in through Skype. Everyone shared ideas on how to get their clients interested in their products. All of them had interesting ideas and perspectives. One of the most profound ideas I took notes about during the conference was the suggestion that as a salesperson for SAS you should put yourself into your clients’ shoes and consider what they would want to hear offered from a salesperson. A SAS salesperson would want to pitch their product in a way that leaves the customer confident they will profit from the SAS software. So, I learned a lot more about sales that I thought I would from this meeting. I’m excited to continue learning about the SAS software specifically tomorrow and I hope day 2 will be just as fun as day 1 was!!
To start off my first day at SEPI Engineering and Construction, I met with Ms. Karen Crawford, my initial contact at the engineering firm. She took me on a tour of the two main buildings that the firm operates in and explained the responsibilities and purpose of each department in them. I then met with Mr. John Wolf, who is the CEI (Construction Engineering and Inspection) Construction Services Manager at SEPI. We initially planned to go walk around and review some construction projects that were underway in the field, but with the weather not cooperating and calling for rain all day, we sadly were unable to do so. Luckily, Mr. Wolf had an exciting meeting to go in Morrisville. We were meeting with the town manager of Morrisville and several other contractors and business partners of SEPI to discuss the progress of a project that they were working on. It was really interesting to experience the side of engineering that you might not think about too often, which is the business and political aspect, and how much money, risk, paperwork, planning, etc. is involved with construction projects. I was warned ahead of time that the meeting might get a little confrontational and aggressive, as its purpose was to meet with a representative from a construction company that was hired by the town to construct a railroad and to widen the roads in specific areas, and they weren’t doing a very good job. The construction crew was severely behind schedule, costing the town and business partners a lot of money in liquidated damages, and unreliable in terms of following plans and sticking to their word. The meeting did get a little intense at times, but that just reinforced the importance and gravity of the “construction” that takes place behind the scenes, not just out in the field. I’m excited to see what’s in store for me in the upcoming days at SEPI Engineering and Construction!
Fortunately, day three started off less rocky than every other day thus far! Third time is a charm, I guess! The day that followed was most definitely the least eventful of all of them. The first order of business was to hop into a legislative meeting, house-specific, to discuss the new budget once again. In this particular session and bill, there are no amendments allowed to be made. This was an action instituted by the majority party, and the meeting ran very long as to voiced anger and concerns by the minority party. In total, we sat in the meeting for about 3 hours, and then the UNC student interning for Mrs. Perkinson and I were given the blessing to go out for lunch. We went to an adorable restaurant called Centro, which is owned by the same family that runs Dos Taquitos. It was delicious, and then we headed back to the LOB (Legislative Office Building) for more meetings. When we met up with Mrs. Perkinson once again, she regretted to inform us that the session from earlier STILL hadn’t been completed. The session was supposed to take less than 2 hours, but it was running on 4.5! We had plans to meet with Representative Grier Martin, but we obviously couldn’t as he was in session at that time. We then talked to one of Mrs. Perkinson’s colleagues before being allowed to leave around 3pm, as there wasn’t much else to do.
During my first day at the SAS work experience program one of the first things we did was listen to a presentation about SAS culture and life at SAS. One of the most interesting parts of the presentation was learning some ways that data can be applied and ways that it can help the world. For example, we learned how data can be used in retail, banking, environmental matters, sports, etc. We learned about how data is used to create a profile for users, which is then used to create effective advertisements specifically for each user. The SAS presentation really showed how SAS is concerned with helping with issues in the real world; for example, data can be used to track and monitor members of endangered species.
After this presentation, we were able to shadow two different SAS employees who both work within the Human Resources department, specifically with hiring and recruiting. First, Christie explained what her job is and showed some of her everyday tasks, such as reaching out to prospective employees to schedule interviews. She also showed us the email that is typically sent out to those about to be interviewed at SAS, and the videos attached to those emails which depict life at SAS. Second, Jessica explained about her job, which is similar to Christie’s except for that it is less geared towards university students. She showed us her process for sorting through submitted resumes and how LinkedIn – the program she and her coworkers use – works.
Here is a picture of Building Q’s main sign at its entrance.
Today we started our work at French West Vaughn, a marketing and advertising company. French West Vaughn has about 50 different clients. The companies job is to help promote and spread the word about their clients brands. Some of the brands that French West Vaughn has are Melitta coffee products, arena swim wear, and north Carolina pork council. Every day we will be working with a different part of the company to learn how the company functions. Today we worked with Morgan Dougherty, the Account Executive. We helped her find both good and bad reviews about these different companies so they can get information about how the public is viewing the products and adapt their techniques based on the comments. Melitta and Arena are doing pretty well. Melitta actually just released a new coffee pour over cup that they are trying to promote. Unfortunately, the North Carolina Pork Council is currently facing 7 different lawsuits and has already lost the first law suit. French West Vaughn is working to help improve how the public is viewing the pork council. We learned a lot today and I look forward to learn more about the other jobs at the marketing company.
I had the privileged of heading to SAS for my Work Experience Program. Along with Kevin C, Isaac F, Matthew C, Will P, Jessica J, and Megan T, I was given an intro to SAS with Ms Christie Dougherty, one of their University Recruiters. This included a tour of Q building, where we met up and head the intro, as well as a presentation over the history of SAS and some of the projects it is currently working on. This was led by Steve, another University Recruiter, which helped us understand what SAS takes pride in and the people they want to attract.
After the intro, we had the pleasure of eating lunch as a group in the dining hall of C building. I would later learn this was one of the higher end places to eat on campus, one where they served pizza everyday. There was also a salad bar, grill station with burgers and hot dogs, and other daily offerings like a pork chop. We had the opportunity to eat with both Ms Dougherty and her manager, talking about a range of topics from CA, to college, to the NBA Finals.
The last half of the day I spent with the IT department. Leaving the rest of the CA people, I headed over to H Building, where local Intern Chris Eaves gave me a tour of the help desks. This portion of the department dealt with internal issues at SAS that arouse when workers had technical difficulties. I later helped Mark Davis conduct interviews with members of his team, helping to access ways to improve the way SAS deals with problems such as viruses, technical malfunctions, and identifying the severity of every complaint.
Lobby of H Building
I started my work experience this morning as an odd job taker of sorts. Carrying computers to box them up, moving boxes of charging cords and helping Mr. Qiao with some TV trouble. But after the short morning of errands, I was put up to a more pressing task of re-imaging computers turned in by the upper school. After an informative instruction on how to re-image a computer by Coach Moore, I sat amongst the towering stacks of computers waiting to be processed and got to work. Things were a little slow at first with me getting my bearings and maybe misspelling a few commands here and there. Once I got my system down though, I was cooking with gas and knocked out almost 40 computers greatly depleting the stack I started with earlier. I was glad to give the IS department a hand and lighten their workload by getting the computers imaged for them and I’m glad for the organization skills I gained while working today.
During my first day of the Work Experience Program, I started out at Trailblazers Studios. Trailblazers is a video production studio that does everything from developing ideas to editing material. Today started at the first stage of video production: development. Going in, I didn’t know much about this stage in the process. What exactly did the development team do? I shadowed Makenna and Sydney, who are part of the development team at Trailblazers, to find out. As they shared different reals and clips they had put together for pitches, I learned that their job is to come up with ideas for different shows, documentaries, etc. Once they find people or concepts that fit the bill, they conduct interviews and gather footage to put together a short clip to pitch to different companies who might want to put the show on their platform. They put in all this work and most of the time their ideas are turned down. It’s a unique field because they have to do a little of everything: they have to create the idea, produce some film, edit the film down to a real, and pitch the ideas to different companies. I learned that the two women in the development office that I shadowed spend most of their days brainstorming by scouring the internet. They collaborate and stay very busy with multiple projects at one time. Today we spent most of the day looking at different projects they were working on. I even got to help find people that would be willing to be on a specific project Sydney was working on. This particular example was a short 5-minute-long miniseries that would air on Snapchat if approved. Overall it was a great first day full of learning and laughs.
Yesterday was my first, and last day of working with Mr. Yaffe. He is a music producer and a cellist in the North Carolina Symphony. On Memorial Day I was given the opportunity to sit in with him while he was recording a live group of three people.
I showed up about an hour before the recording. There, Mr. Yaffe showed me how he set up the microphones and all the technology necessary in order to properly record the artists in a wide open space. Even though there were only 2 instruments and one vocalist being recorded, ten mics were used. I learned a little bit about different kinds microphones and how each one captures sound differently. A ribbon mic, for example only catches sound in front, and behind it, while a cardioid microphone captures sound in a heart-like shape.
After I was walked through all the materials set up on stage, I was brought back to where the music producer and director sit, which was much less glamorous then the large, fancy auditorium. None the less, it was cool.
In there I was shown around the small area a bit, and Mr. Yaffe explained to me how the programs on his computer assist with the recording process. After that, for the next six hours (not including a two hour dinner break) I got to listen to the music being played on stage. I learned a lot about how the recording process works and the difficulties of being both the person being recorded as well as the producer. It was fascinating to see how the individuals around me have been trained to listen and catch certain errors within the music and work with the artist to fix them.
Unfortunately, Mr. Hodgen (the man I am doing the rest of my work experience program with) had to go to the doctors this morning, and decided that our first day together should be tomorrow the 30th.
