Today was an especially important day because I got the opportunity to talk to Ms. Robin Smith, an environmental law attorney in Chapel Hill. She and I met at Caribou Coffee in Chapel Hill to discuss what she as an Environmental law attorney does, as well as what the field encompasses. We talked about what she does as an ELA and I learned so much about the field and about what steps it takes to become an individual in her position. We talked about how important EL is and will be in the future because of the increases in technology and increasing need for protection of our world’s natural resources. Overall, it was a fascinating discussion that got me even more interested in pursuing a career in Environmental Law.
Tag: Day 4
Day 4: Understanding Fashion Production
As a continuation of my Parsons x Teen Vogue online class, I began another course today. Titled ‘Understanding Fashion Production’, this course focused on the production cycle. The production cycle begins with thinking of an idea and design and ends with the consumer purchasing and, hopefully, loving the final product. More specifically, the course introduced the five main steps to this overarching production cycle: formulating the business plan, sample creating, factory preparation, working with the factory, and making the sale. Like yesterday’s course, each example included a series of videos and text, as well as a related piece of industry advice. The videos featured Angela Gao, an independent fashion designer and a faculty member at Parsons, and Brandon Maxwell, a fashion designer whose brand has recently been on the rise. At the bottom of my post are some snip-its of the videos I was watching. I found the lessons from today very interesting because many of them introduced things that I had never heard of before. For example, when submitting your sizing to a factory for production, each measurement is allowed to have a certain standard deviation. Because these items are being produced in a factory, mistakes are bound to happen, so the standard deviation allows these types of trivial mistakes to reduce both fabric waste and lost time. Another reason why I found this course so interesting was because it focused on the wide-scale, mass production of garments, an area that I had not known much about before today. Though I plan to continue and complete this course over the summer, next week, I am headed to Louis Cherry Architecture in downtown Raleigh. I cannot wait to see what I’ll learn there!
Soliciting, Soliciting, Soliciting!
Today I spent a majority of my time at camp contacting places to hang the poster I created in the morning. In my morning meeting with Mr. Rothrock, we discussed fixed vs. variable costs. We talked about how discounts work, and what the expense of giving away a free camp is. We also talked about the most effective way to market discounts, which eventually led me to creating a poster as a marketing attempt. I created a poster, which I am quite proud of!
Mr. Rothrock had to leave before I finished the poster, because he is working on opening the Holly Springs campus before June 18th. Even though he did not get to see the poster, I look forward to showing him on Monday! After creating the poster, I contacted local community environments to hang my creation! This was a very eye opening experience for me. First of all, I cannot believe it is so problematic to hang a poster in some of the places I called! I contacted 11 libraries in total, only receiving permission to hang the poster in three of them. The three I received permission to hang posters in were regional libraries. The other libraries that I contacted were small local libraries, and they said they were not comfortable promoting an organization that was not a non-profit organization. I then contacted approximately a dozen local private elementary schools with hopes of displaying the posters on campus. I only heard back positive results from 3 schools, but left voicemails for 4 others, which I hope to hear back from on Monday. After my morning of contacting schools, libraries and local coffee shops with community boards, I headed back into the classroom to say goodbye to the campers. Today is Friday, which means this camp session is over.
Though I’ll miss them dearly, I look forward to next week and the exciting new kids I’ll get to meet!
Day 4! Last day at Entigral!
Today was Jonathan and I’s last day at the company Entigral. Throughout our time here, we have done a lot of the same but it was very accomplishing to finally finish what we have worked so hard on. We successfully found the information for 4000 car dealerships all throughout North Carolina. If you ever need a car, used or new, Mercedes or Honda, I’m sure one of these can find you the perfect car! After hours and hours of work, we completed the 3 tasks that Mr. Self had asked us to complete. We made a starter powerpoint for Mr. Self to use to sell the product, we completed a list of the 50 state car dealership associations across the country and found information for all the car dealerships in North Carolina. Even though all of this work was very time consuming, I learned a lot about what Marketing is really about and Mr. Self assured us that all of this information would be very crucial for other steps of this company. Mr. Self then ended our time together with some advice about our future and we said our goodbyes.
Day 4 – Programming… again
Today started out very similar to yesterday. Once again I was able to start at 9. When I arrived at Bavarian Nordic, I quickly went into the conference room. Janelle told us that they would be interviewing an applicant for a Clinical Trials Manager this morning and that we were welcome to sit in. Kaitlin and I very excitedly agreed. The applicant’s name was Josh and had been in the ClinOps field for quite some time. Kaitlin and I sat quietly towards the end of the table and observed as Bavarian Nordic employees asked Josh a variety of questions. Most of them were the standard interview questions like “what’s your greatest weakness?” and “explain a time where you faced conflict.”
After the interview had finished, we said goodbye to Josh and stayed behind with Janelle and Ms. Handelsman to discuss the candidate. We discussed his various strengths and weaknesses and how he presented himself in the interview. It was very helpful to see the reflection process after an interview. I now feel like I am more prepared for upcoming interviews if I have the chance to do some in the fall. I learned that you should never lie in an interview because they can easily see through it. It is also important to ask lots of questions to show that you have done your research and you are engaged. In addition to this, it is imperative to maintain good body language and eye contact.
Once we had finished debriefing, Kaitlin and I went back to our SAS training. After a couple hours of programming, we stopped for lunch. Midway through my lunch, Ms. Eason stopped to check up on me. It was really cool telling her all I learned. That gave me a chance to reflect a little bit on the last 4 days. Once lunch was over, I went back to my desk for more programming. After a grueling couple hours, I finished the SAS training. I was overcome with joy for a split second until I remembered that I was not done with my training. Erika instructed us to complete one more online lesson dealing with the formatting of data. These chapters were much quicker. Once I was finished, I saved my certificates and headed out for the weekend. It was a very tiring day, but I will have a chance to rest up over the weekend so I can be ready to hit the ground running next week!
Day 4 – More Model Homes and an Open House
Ah Friday! The best day of the week in my opinion and one of the best days of this internship by far. Tommy and I started our day of by driving around to the model homes that we couldn’t see yesterday. We got to tour 3 model homes, take pictures, and talk with the agents responsible for those model homes. Tommy and I had lots of fun as we looked at every nook and cranny of these model homes just like we were buying the homes ourselves. At the end of the morning we got tons of pictures, a list of pros and cons of each model homes, and an experience that I will never forget. After our exiting review of these model homes, Tommy and I stopped for lunch while on our way to a mock open house with Mrs. Burkett. We met Mrs. Burkett at an open house where she pretended like we were her client and she showed us the house. It was very interesting to see what characteristics of the house she would point out and what things she couldn’t talk to us about. So far this week has been great and Tommy and I have learned so much about every type of real estate. 
Day 4- Last day at RTI
Today I spent my last day in the lab for a majority of the time which i loved. I started the morning aliquoting. Basically it’s taking a simple of a solution that was used in the trial and pipette a small sample around 2 ml and putting it in a small vile to keep while the containers used in the trial is sent off to the lab. I did this for all the trials used before they were sent to the lab. Afterwards I had time to finish up my mini project that was i doing this week, a powerpoint full of images to show the women in africa to explain and get their opinions and thoughts on the device. Then we went to lunch we talked about our weekend plans. Afterwards I went back to the lab and was taught how to properly dispose of non-regulated liquid waste, and then I helped dispose of a large amount of this waste. Lastly I pippetted some samples into a quartz dish with lots of little wells that would inserted into a device that uses UV spectroscopy to record the concentration of the drug in the solution that was released by the device placed in this solution to mimic a real person. Afterwards I debriefed with Dr. Rothrock about my week at RTI and showed/sent her my presentation that she would later use. I had an amazing week at RTI learning about what they do as a company, learning about the cool project that Dr. Rothrock and her team is working on, and getting to work in the labs! It was a fantastic experience. 
^ Me pipetting solution into the quartz plate to be placed in the uv spectrophotometer
Day 4 – WakeMed Hospital
Today I saw a CABG surgery done via a robot. I found this incredibly interesting. The machine reaches over the patient and has four rotatable arms. One arm is used for the camera inside the body and two other arms are inside the patient. The doctor controls the two arms from a control desk away from the patient. The doctor was able to use the arms in a wrist rotation, which allowed for better maneuvering inside the body. This surgery lasted from 8:30-1:30. Next, we mimicked the Linq implant with a practice device. Lastly, we watched a triple lead pace maker implant. Below are all of the devices that have been given to me over the past week.
Day 4 – Innovating in the Real World (and some awesome speakers)
Today was, unsurprisingly, another awesome day at FHI 360! When the first hour of our day was dedicated to working on our main project and going to get waffles, I knew that we would have a rigorous yet fun day. We did quite a bit of brainstorming during this period, and finalized our idea to utilize Instagram. Even though we had agreed yesterday to use the poll feature of the Instagram story, use posts to educate, and use live videos to answer questions, we focused in on the details, such as what questions to ask and what the format of our posts would be. We even created a real Instagram account to show the samples of account stories, posts, and live videos. We also solved another important part of our project, which was deciding how to gain publicity for our account. We had the idea to collaborate with big name accounts to gain interest and support underdeveloped countries. Our example of this is pairing up with Swell, the water bottle company, to create a collection of water bottles created by artists in an underdeveloped country. A portion of the profits from this collection would go directly to the country where the art came from. Additionally, we would start a giveaway, where Instagram users can do a few simple things, such as tagging friends and answering the poll questions, to get the chance to win one (or many) of these Swell bottles.
from waffles –> the grind
Throughout the day, we worked on this idea and developed the presentation, in between the speakers that came and joined us. First, Merywen Wigley, Project Director of Integrated Development, and her intern Kara came to join us. They discussed the humanitarian crises that were occurring and showed us some videos. I would be lying if I told you I wasn’t crying by the end of it. However, while I was watching, in between my anger at the injustice and my sadness, I decided that helping these refugees was absolutely something that I would love to explore doing for the rest of my life. With my love for service, language, and science, it could be perfect for me.
After lunch, we talked to Sara Tenorio, the Director of Research Ethics. She discussed all the processes that they have to go through in order to ensure that all people involved in research are there by choice and are aware of the possible harms and benefits. This was really interesting and really taught me more about the legal side of healthcare.
Lastly, we talked to Kyle Healy, the son of an FHI 360 employee and a current student at App State. He talked to us about the gap year that he took, including what he did there and what he learned. It sounded like an incredible experience for him, and it definitely made me consider taking a gap year!
Day 4 at Crowder
Day 4 at Crowder was my most tedious day yet as I had to go through a large book of detailed specifics and reports on a project called Shamrock located at Sanford in Clayton County, GA. My task was to analyze the +1000 page book to find any specifics about any excerpts detailing the need for a certified engineer, manufacturer, or a warranty exceeding 1 year.
After this, I worked on estimates for a bio-chemical plant individually for the first time! I calculated the concrete suspending slabs costs for one of the three tankers in the last few hours I had. When I come back Monday, I will begin to witness some of the bids go down. Ultimately, I have learned so much about the different divisions, estimating techniques, contracting supplies from smaller contractors, and much more.