Day 3

After a few days, I’ve finally settled into a sort of schedule at FHI 360, one that is full of project work and meetings with new staff. My favorite meeting today was with Irina Yacobson, a Technical Advisor who trains healthcare providers around the world on how to safely administer contraceptives. As she is Russian, Yacobson was initially hired to work with women in the more remote regions of the former Soviet Union, where the problems with contraception were almost the opposite of those of more conservative or developing countries. Though women did have access to contraception, abortion was used as a method of family planning, and some women had large numbers of abortions rather than taking contraceptives to prevent pregnancy in the first place. FHI 360 worked to both prevent those possibly damaging practices, and I found it interesting to see that the non-profit’s scope was not limited to just preventing pregnancy and STDs in developing countries, but addresses all aspects of women’s health worldwide.

Irina Yacobson also told us about how important experiential teaching is – many organizations dump large quantities of contraception, like IUDs or injections, onto developing countries. But the organizations don’t train the healthcare providers in the countries how to use them: in Eastern Europe, depo-provera, an injectable, was being injected twice a day like an antibiotic instead of once every three months like it was supposed to be, all because there were no instructions accompanying the delivered drugs. That middle step of training between creating the contraceptives and putting them to use is so crucial, but one I’d never thought about before. Lastly, Yacobson showed us her demonstration on how to insert an IUD that she gives to health care providers, with a plastic uterus model and all – it made the whole process a bit less mystical to me. After a couple days with the CTI team, I’ve realized that my sexual education had been lacking in contraceptives beyond just condoms, and other methods as well as female sexual activity and reproduction are still pretty stigmatized, even in the US. That’s why I’ve really appreciated the work the CTI team does – they are working make female reproductive health safer and less stigmatizednot just for teens like us, but for women all around the world.

– Hope

Day 3

One of the highlights of Day 3 at FHI 360 was the CTID Brainstorming Lunch. By this point in time, we had met with a scientist, technical advisor, and worked on a couple of our many assigned projects. Anyways, Maddie, Hope, Caroline and I promptly headed to Room 3101, a spacious conference room, with our lunches brought from home in hand. I for one felt like I had returned to my elementary school days, for my lunch box contained a homemade peanut butter and jelly sandwich with pringles and cashews. Just like most of the meetings we had attended so far, this one began late, after all of the members of the team congregated into this area. To begin, I was tasked with calling an associate who was located elsewhere, impressing myself with my ability (and success) to use the unconventional phone residing in front of me. After everyone began munching, signaling that they were situated, the laid back, informal meeting started. I was extremely impressed by the diversity within the team, from their background to origin, and admired how everyone shared an incredible passion for global public health, specifically contraception and planned parenting. The so called “journey” of each member to FHI 360 was fascinating, and I was amazed by the incredible, moving opportunities these people had, especially their stories of work in the field (most commonly in Sub-Saharan Africa). We not only learned those sorts of identifiers, but also participated in an ice breaker regarding food. I admired the closeness and community-feel of the group, which allowed me to better see myself working in a similar organization in the future. For me, this experience was particularly interesting and rewarding because it was an opportunity to really get to know our mentors, uniting the information we’ve previously learned with real people and their goals. Although only an hour, I felt like I learned a lot, in a way different than that of previous days, and I am excited to see what cool experience tomorrow brings.

DAY 3

I began the day today by being sent to Narnia by my brilliant phone. There was traffic on my way so I thought it would be a good idea to try a different route, but ended up nowhere near where I wanted to be and completely unsure of where I was. Luckily, I had left early enough and wasn’t late.

I started off the day sort of “debriefing” the meeting from yesterday. There were a lot of numbers and figures and medical terminology that were all being fired off at once, which made it a bit hard to understand. After having gained a better understanding of it, I then was sent to one of the account reps to look at the ways in which payment claims are processed. It was cool to see how much work is put in for what most people would likely think is a seemingly simple task.

I did a few other things throughout the day, but my favorite had to be going to all the different locations to pick up the charge tickets. This may sound boring, but we went to a number of different surgery centers and hospitals, and it was very interesting to get to see what each of the different locations do on a daily basis. At one of the locations, we also had to be in the pre-op and post-op areas, which I originally thought would be mundane but actually proved quite fascinating. I had thought that this little “field trip” would be a waste of time, but I actually quite enjoyed meeting a number of the physicians and office staff at all of the different places. In addition, getting to actually go back where the patients were held wasn’t something I thought I would do, but it was intriguing nonetheless.

One of the more humorous events of the day was when we were at the location in which the office manager and I were back in the pre-op and post-op areas. One of the things we had to do was pick up patient records in addition to picking up the charge tickets. At this location, the patient records were actually kept in the “Operating Suite,” where all of the operating rooms are housed. When we reached the door to the suite, she very quickly pressed the door button, reached her arm through the door as far as she could without actually walking in, then yanked her arm back out and shut the door. She laughed, somewhat embarrassed, saying that it always makes her a bit uncomfortable to have to pick those sheets up without wearing any kind of sterile clothing. She told me that she has had dreams in the past where she was sucked into the suite through a vortex or tripped and fell right into someone’s procedure. Though her dreams were a bit far-fetched and comical, I understood her point perfectly. Literally right on the other side of the door, the operation suite began and there was an operating room probably no more than 20 feet away, which was a bit daunting.

This has been a fantastic week so far, and I am looking forward to bringing Week 1 to a close!

Day 3

My favorite part of today was working on our video project assignment. We all gathered around a small table (centered with delicious peanut m&ms) and brainstormed ideas. There was a lot of positive energy in the room, and we were all excited about our ideas. After viewing numerous YouTubes, we created our concept. We decided on combining recordings of drawings on whiteboards, real objects, and interviews. The video will promote the new development in contraceptive methods and is based on Dr. Dorflinger speech “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.” Additionally, FHI360 is working on creating a biodegradable implants and trying to make injectable contraceptives last a longer duration of time. It has been very interesting to learn about all the different parts of contraception, and hear from numerous different employees on their personal projects. I am very excited to continue story-boarding the transitions between animation and interviewing, and drawing up visuals that will be drawn on the whiteboard. I also managed to eat half of the bowl of peanut m&ms!

Day 3: Lions, Tigers, and Bulls (Oh My!) – The Wonders of Baseball and the Chinese Zodiacs

Kid 1: “When I’m 80-years-old —”

Kid 2: “You’ll be a great grandma!”

Kid 3: “No, you’ll be like Margaret!”

I don’t know if it’s just because it’s day three, but today was brutal. Maybe it’s because I’m so incredibly old – although, if I look like this at age 80, I won’t be disappointed, but I digress – or maybe my body is already run down by the rampant onslaught of boisterous children. Perhaps it’s because the school year is almost over, or maybe it’s because lunch starts at 10:45, and that post-lunch sleepiness hits when there are still 4.5 hours left of the day. One student looked at me today (at only 10:00) and said, “I need a nap.” Me too, kiddo, me too.

Even with my sleepy daze, I walked into the classroom thrilled to share a funny coincidence (that’s a fancy pants word as the kids would say) that occurred this week. On Monday, while instructing them to write about a fun time with a friend, Mrs. Cohen gave the students an example regarding a time she went to a Durham Bulls game and caught a foul ball, only to have it taken from her bag by her brother-in-law. By sheer luck, at Wednesday night’s Bulls game, I ended up with a foul ball. Their faces lit up like a Christmas tree when I passed the ball around to them and faced constant questions like “why is it so hard?” and “how’d you catch it with your cast?”

Lunchtime brought me more questions and another lesson for this week. To a kindergartener, age is really just a number. I could be 17, 26, 80, or 152, and it wouldn’t matter. To them, I’m just old. Lunch is where all of this age discussion started. They had me guessing their ages and took turns guessing mine, resulting in some… interesting answers. One student started talking about their Chinese zodiac animal, and suddenly (another fancy pants word), I was the expert because they discovered I study the language.

It was today, specifically, that I wished that these curious creatures we call children would never lose that spark of wonder or urge to be inquisitive as they become old like me. These bright-eyed and brilliant kids keep me on my toes, and I feel so honored to be that old wise one they look up to.

Day 3

Today was my second day at SAS as a part of the Cary Academy Work Experience Program and my time was spent with not only the Corporate Creative team, but also the Video team! At Corporate Creative offices, I was introduced to Mr. Aaron Overington, the Senior Design Manager, as well as many of his colleagues. I thoroughly enjoyed learning about the design process behind their booths and banners for their participation at the Global Forum, a huge conference held annually to showcase SAS. It was super interesting seeing the designs progress from sketches to reality, and the final result always looked chiq. Also, Mr. Overington and his colleague took me up to SAS’s very own printing site, only a few feet from the campus gates. I was told that the printing site will pretty much print anything you want, regardless of the size or complexity of the image – thus, it was an essential tool of the Corporate Creatives. I remember there being a huge, industrial printer which printed the panels for booths and things like that – I couldn’t imagine how much the ink cartridges cost! After my time in Corporate Creative, I was handed over to the SAS Video team whose job is to create any video needed for events, advertisements, or promotions. Mr. Ed Harriss of the SAS Production team showed me around the audio and film studios on the SAS campus, something I never knew existed! I appreciated how passionate he was about his job and his enthusiasm really resonated with me. What I found interesting is that he had been working in the Video Department for 20 years, and technically, he was the last hire of the department!

Day 3

Today I called Professor Malone who is a country music historian and is mainly involved in country music. I called him to confirm the date in which I would be interviewing him twice, and unfortunately he didn’t pick up, but I got his answering machine which was more entertaining than one might think. His voicemail is actually a jingle, and seeing as I had never heard it before, it was very amusing. It was very long for a voicemail and rhymed and included Professor Bill Malone’s name and had something to do with him being sorry he missed my call. I think it went something like “you have reached the malones we’re sorry we have missed your call/ please leave a message at the beep and we’ll get back to you all.” I assume it was him singing in the track. He was accompanied by a woman, who I assume to be his wife, who was doing harmonies to it which I found extremely amusing, that someone would go to the trouble to write this and add harmonies to it for something as simple as the voicemail on their answering machine. The tune altogether reminded me of a show I saw in Disney World’s Magic Kingdom called Country Bear Jamboree which is a bunch of animatronic bears singing old country/bluegrass like tunes. His tune on his answering machine had the exact same sound. Long story short I left a message and he hasn’t gotten back to me but hopefully he will by tomorrow.

Day 3- Finance

Today started with many warnings that it will be dry. Finance isn’t something that is super exciting they told us, but it was still a lot of fun. We learned about FM, or financial management, a program that SAS uses to monitor the money that SAS spends, like where it is spent, and how much is spent. That was the main conversation for today, but one story was with an audit-person that came to speak with us about his job. I asked if there were any consequences with a company misusing their money, and he talked about a SAS scandal and how many people that were well known were fired and jailed because of him. I thought that accounting was all about math and numbers, but it really is about working with people and the budget, and potentially putting people in jail!

Day 3 – Up Close and Personal

Today was definitely less hands-on than my last two days, as I did not work in the lab at all. Instead, I met with Dr. Depro, an environmental economist (also a senior economist at RTI) to discuss his job and career in economics. After trekking across the RTI campus (I don’t think it was actually that far it was just so hot), we arrived at the Economics building and took the elevator up tothe fourth floor, which had a great view of the RTI campus. Dr. Depro explained his career journey and his projects at RTI, which mainly focus on how environmental conditions affect the housing market and the specific groups of people affected by these changes. Dr. Depro was super nice and gave me extremely helpful advice that I will be sure to remember throughout college and my future career.

In the afternoon, I got to witness the SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) in action with Kiera and Madisen. Two material scientists took us over to examine the samples of nanofibers they created. Because the samples were not metal, they were coated in gold to become electrically conductive (necessary for SEM to work since it uses electrons). The samples were then carefully placed in the SEM, and the researchers were able to scan through the images of the samples to find what they were looking for. Excited for tomorrow!

Prepping the samples (purple is ionized argon)

Day 3

Today, I visited the finance department of SAS. Throughout the day, I got to talk to many different people and got to see the different parts of finance. During one meetings with a global finance reporter, he talked about how they use programming to make it faster to categorize and clean up data within excel. He talked about how the process of doing their job has changed over the years as SAS continues to try and streamline all of the processes that occur within the company. This idea of making it easier and more efficient came up a lot throughout the time I have been at SAS, and it was interesting to see how many of the finance people knew how to use a simple programming tool called Visual Basics to make their jobs easier and more efficient. Today was also the first time where I got to sit down with the interns of a department and talk about how they got this internship as well as talk about college. There were 3 interns in the finance department. I thought that it was cool how we connected when talking about school and other stuff, although there was a significant gap between us both in years and perspectives. Even though the content that we learned today wasn’t as interesting as the previous days, I thought that we still learned a lot, especially receiving advice from the people there on how to seize opportunities and to always strive to find better ways of doing things.