Today was my seventh day at SAS as a part of the Cary Academy Work Experience program and I spent my time split between buildings E and R. Although my time in Building E was indeed, very interesting, my favorite part of the day began in Building D. Not only was building D super nice, but there was so much to see! I loved the technology products room, which was filled with brand new laptops, desktops, iPads, iPhones, iMacs, MacBooks, VR headsets, and any piece of technology a billion dollar company needs to efficiently function. I was astonished at the sheer number of devices that were just stacked on shelves, some shelves supporting over $75,000 an undisclosed amount of tech. My favourite part of the day was when I was able to test out a Virtual Reality headset with an archery game. Basically, enemies would try and break down the gate to the castle, and it was my job to kill them before they could do so. Indeed, I was the best bowman since Robin Hood, as I have never seen a more gifted shooter than myself. All in all, the day was wildly informative and an incredible experience.
Tag: Day 7
Day 7
Before walking into our one o’clock meeting, I mentally prepared myself for the three and half hours of back-to-back meetings to come. However, I had been looking forward to this specific conference since Day 1: it was about the use of drones in public health. Hope, Maddie, Caroline, and I eagerly entered the room, introducing ourselves and our interests to Marga, a research associate, as well as another member of her team. It was fascinating learning about the new technology of drones, and we were able to brainstorm ways it could be integrated within international development, specifically in third world countries. Some of the ideas we came up were contraceptive/medical device delivery, surveying villages, administering vaccines/implants, finding locations of standing water, agriculture applications and more, many of which are currently being developed.
We were shown videos of “swarms” which are essentially groups of drones that communicate with one another – it was practically out of a science fiction movie…Although all of it was extremely interesting, one particular aspect that stood out to me was Zipline, a company that currently delivers blood among other things to various sites in Rwanda. They receive an order from a doctor at a local clinic or hospital via SMS, and immediately send the product to the location by drone.; they have a capacity to send more than forty out a day! To me, this invention is revolutionary, and to see how it is already being implemented makes me wonder where this technology will be ten years from now. It also brings up many interesting points because there are currently few regulations which is really problematic, “and with no regulations there’s chaos” to quote a Ministry of Health in Sub-Saharan Africa. I had no idea this technology was worked on so much, and was not aware of its potential positive capability until this meeting.
An hour or so later, we met with Heather Vahdat, to learn about the Kenya Ideation event that took place in April. It was honestly indescribable to see the pictures taken, and read stories of women in the field; I can only imagine what it was like to actually be there. It was amazing hearing how people from all over the world came to this event, united with a passion to help women.
Day 7: Technological Advances
Today was a day full of surgeries. The first one was the most interesting of the four. Dr. Logel did a debridement and stem cell injection of the patient’s achilles to repair the tear. The way he did this was he took blood from the patient’s arm and placed the vile in a centrifuge which separated the hemoglobin from the plasma (containing the platelets). Dr. Logel took the plasma and injected it into the patient’s achilles hoping that it would stimulate growth and repair the torn achilles tendon. I just thought that this was extremely cool and a great demonstration of how medicine is constantly evolving. Another surgery that he did today was inserting a joint cartilage implant at the big toe. This implant was only just approved by the FDA 6 months ago, so it’s extremely new. The implant is meant as an alternative solution to arthritis in the toe joints. Most commonly, arthritis in these joints is solved by fusion of the joints which inhibits movement of that joint. With the help of this implant, it allows for space between the joints, so that arthritis isn’t a problem. Arthritis occurs when the cartilage between joints has been worn down to the point where it’s just bone on bone which is painful. The surgery consist of Dr. Logel shaving down the ends of each joint to smooth the bones and then drilling a hole to fit the implant into and placing the implant into the hole. After the implant is placed, the surgery is complete. That was definitely pretty cool to witness especially considering it has only been performed a dozen times and he’s done the surgery 7 times.
Day 7 SAS
The third day of SAS was different from the rest. The person I have been shadowing was gone today. So instead I went with someone who works in HR. The interesting thing I did today was got to sit in on an Emerging Leaders meeting that our guy oversees. This program is for new and rising managers to learn more about their new responsibilities. Today this meeting they had a conversation with someone who was recently promoted to a much higher position. He discussed his new responsibilities and how he handled the rise up. It was a very insightful meeting.
Day 7- Law
Today was one of the most interesting days of the two weeks. At first, I assumed that I would just be talking to many lawyers about the legal side of SAS. I was completely wrong. We talked about the last step in the process of selling software- the terms and conditions. Now, this might rub off as a boring topic, but it was very interesting to see how companies can use the software. It turns out SAS software is just like a lease. Every year you must renew the software, and when this time comes, SAS will go up to 4 months of warning the company after the software expires. This truly demonstrates the amount of respect SAS gives to their customers. Can’t wait for IT tomorrow!
Day 7: Cuteness, Chaos, and the All-Dreaded Cupcakes
Teacher: “Friday was Super Kids Day. Well, today is Super Cleaning Day.”
Kid: “Super Cleaning Day? We’re gonna be naked!”
Me: “NO! Keep your clothes on!”
Guess who has 1.75 working hands and managed to get out of directing the 100+ ridiculously adorable kindergarteners in today’s performance? This gal! The long-term substitute music teacher swooped in last minute at yesterday’s rehearsal and agreed to conduct today. No potential to embarrass myself in front of a room full of parents – not that they would’ve paid any attention to me as the kids were a riot.
Post-concert, the kids filed back to their respective classrooms, and I was met with my foe from last week: those darn cupcakes. Thankfully, the cupcakes were passed out without any messes or crying. Most of the afternoon was spent running around, helping Mrs. Cohen and the kids clean the classroom, and playing with the kids in their miscellaneous activities including marbles and Magnetix.
I’m super excited and a bit sad that tomorrow will be my last day with these wonderful people, but I’m also glad the year is nearly done.
ADDENDUM: I forgot to mention this in my original draft. During my internship, I have decidedly kept my hair pinned back to 1) keep it out of the way and 2) keep it from becoming a distraction, but today, I decided to leave it down for once. As I was greeting students in the hallway, one of the special education teachers popped out of her door across the hall and said, “I have a student who is obsessed with colored hair, and he keeps trying to come out here to see it.” So, I went to the room and met my little friend who loves colorful hair as much as I do. I squated down so that he could even touch my hair and see the color up close. It was amazing to see his face light up when I let him play with it, and he even tried to follow me out of the classroom when I went back to where I was.
I wasn’t allowed to take a video of the concert, but enjoy the singing!
SAS Work Experience Day 7 – Internal/External Communications
Today was my 7th day at SAS! In the morning, I was located back in building Q where I was able to visit with people in internal communications department. I first met with Angelica, who told me all about what internal communications does, who heads the team, and the positions. Going into meeting with her, I did not know much at all about internal communications, so it was really cool to find out about everything. She explained to me that each person in the department is responsible for covering/writing articles for a different group at SAS. For example, she covers marketing and meets with the executives, and then another woman in the department was responsible for covering legal and corporate services. I thought it was not only cool to see all the different things that they promote inside SAS, but also the ways in which they accomplish this. I was able to meet with both writers and video editors/producers inside the internal communications department, and they showed me some of the work they did! Being able to see all the equipment and tools that go into creating SAS ads/webinars/promotional videos was super interesting and I’m super glad I got to do this! I even was able to watch some of the videos they put up on the intranet, and these ranged from tutorials to witty SAS culture videos!
Day 7
Today was a very interesting day. In the morning I went with Hugs to hand out vouchers for 12 dollars off each ticket to Wet and Wild water park. We went to a shopping center at 730 in the morning in one of the 1075 cars and Hugs called into the radio and said that he was there handing out these free vouchers. I didn’t expect anyone to show up or if people did there would only be like 5 or fewer but a lot more people showed up than I expected. When we arrived there were five people who were already there and that was cool. Each person got more than one voucher which I thought was really cool bc then they could take family and friends and other people besides themselves. Other people started showing up, usually one or two at a time every couple minutes throughout the hour and in the last ten minutes at least 5 people showed up at once all asking for vouchers and we ended up giving all of them away. All of the people knew Hugs and all of them seemed to listen to the radio station and the morning show and they weren’t just there for the discounted tickets.
After the morning I listened in on the morning show and they did this really mean segment called War of the roses, which other DJs like Ryan Cecreast does and it’s pretty famous. Basically they have people call in who think there significant other is cheating on the and the DJs try and figure it out and help them uncover the truth. They usually end up calling the other person undercover or under fake names and try and get the truth out of them that way but it usually blows up pretty badly. This one ended really badly so I won’t into detail about that.
After I got to call people telling them they won a chance to come into the 1075KZL Studio for Friday morning live. Friday Morning Live is where the Morning Show with Katie and Jared have a bunch of fans come in and watch the show live and they provide breakfast for the fans. If they couldn’t make it this Friday they are allowed to come any Friday they can. I called all the people that were selected and told them about it and I was given a script to read off of in case I messed up. It was easier calling people than I thought it was going to be. Overall today was a good learning day I think for communication skills and professionalism and really being able to work with people.
DAY 7
I came in about 40 minutes late this morning as I had a dentist appointment. I was a bit peeved that I missed the first part of the day and was glad to get started. I started off the day by doing more MIPS work and learning about the way it works. I also spent some time looking at the specific measures that are required for physicians to report when doing procedures. It was pretty cool to see the “inner workings” of how the physicians are paid and how they have a sort of figurative “oversight.”
I then spent the rest of the morning with the billing manager, which was a highly enjoyable experience. She has been with the practice for around 28 years, and seems to have had a wonderful time with it. I really appreciated her incredibly positive and welcoming attitude. That’s certainly not to say that the others I’ve worked with weren’t welcoming as well, but I was quite impressed with her warmth. While I was with her, she was working on credentialing for all the physicians and CRNAs, which I quickly realized is a highly complicated and involved process which requires significant focus and attention to detail. However, it was clear with all of her years of experience that she’s become quite the expert. There were literally several thousand papers that she has to keep up with at all times, all filed very neatly into cabinets, and I’m positive that she must’ve known where exactly every single paper was located.
The credentialing process for each physician and CRNA is very important, as it is what allows them to get reimbursed for their services. The process involves acquiring a significant amount of information from the physicians and CRNAs and then sending that information off to each of the insurance companies with which Regional Anesthesia is in network. In network essentially means that they work together. It is highly important that she receives all of this information, because then she has to create individual credentials for each individual CRNA and physician and then for individual insurance company. So, in essence, she has to keep track of a ton of different documents to make sure they get sent to each insurance company and that they are formatted correctly for that specific company. She told me that the most difficult part is making sure that they are fulfilling all of the requirements for each insurance company, as she said that all of the requirements are different. As such, each physician has upwards of ten different sets of lengthy packets of documents. This all seemed extremely daunting and overwhelming to me, but with her experience, it seemed to be almost second nature to her.
The afternoon was a little bit more low key, and I spent most of the time going over reconciliations and collections with the office manager and one of the financial people. It’s crazy it has almost come to an end!
Day 7 – Richard Henderson and Marketing (*Meetings)!!!!!
Today I got to shadow Richard Henderson from the Marketing department. When I got there initially, I was escorted to the Customer Briefing Center (a very nice conference room at the end of a very nice hallway), where Rich was already giving a presentation to representatives from North Carolina Central University. After about three minutes, he turned the floor over to another presenter and we rushed to another meeting (about how Lenovo can better incorporate Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality into education)! Ah, the life of a marketer!
The focal point of the day, surprisingly, had nothing to do with Lenovo, marketing, software, or hardware at all! I got to attend a surprise bridal shower for one of Rich’s direct reports! The party was largely set up by the time we got there, and it didn’t take long before she showed up and we all yelled “Surprise!”, as one does at surprise parties. Then we all got together and played an odd version of charades where you talk but you can’t say certain words and the other team had to guess. It was a lot of fun, but Rich and I had to leave early (in classic rushing businessman fashion) so that we could attend yet another meeting about Augmented and Virtual Reality!