Day2 – CA Work Experience Program

Second Day Shenanigans

Today was our first day going into the office in downtown Raleigh! Once we arrived at the office this morning Ms. Alaina Ruggery gave us a tour of the building and introduced us to some of her coworkers. We got to sit in on a weekly “creative status” meeting: members of the creative, social, and account teams all debriefed on finished/upcoming projects for clients, as well as, discussed due dates.

Afterward, we met up with Senior Project Manager – Erin and Senior Producer – Deegan. They discussed with us where their interest in the field stemmed from: senior producer, Deegan, did not originally go to school for production and videography but fell into it and loved it at a previous job. Our discussion also led to a riveting conversation about the lack of women in production, videography, editing in this male-dominated field.

sonia getting her headshot taken by the infamous brick wall!

After getting our headshots taken, we took a lunch break, and when we returned we had a debrief with Ms. Alaina Ruggery before continuing our shadowing experiences with Senior Account Executive – Rachel. Rachel discussed with us the differences between her job on the account team in comparison to those on the creative team. She highlighted that what she loves most about the job is how every day is something different and exciting due to the versatility of the agency. We learned this does come with the flipside of the difficulty in juggling the wants and needs of different clients across the US and the globe! After loading her with questions specific to her job and regarding different FWV projects and clients (such as their work with Wrangler and the V Foundation), our first day in the office came to an end! Tomorrow, Kendyl, Sonia, Linda, and I look forward to shadowing more company employees in different areas of the office!

selfie with george strait – wrangler advertisement

Day 2: Probation Violations & Felony Pleas Court

This morning, I attended probation violations court at the Wake County Justice Center. Throughout the numerous cases heard, I learned that the laws and regulations surrounding probation is constantly evolving and judges have to stay updated with the newest statutes and regulations to carry out successful trials. I also discovered that judges and attorneys have to be working efficiently together in the courtroom to make sure things run smoothly in our judicial system.

In the afternoon, Judge Davidian presided over the felony pleas court while I had the opportunity to witness the initial appearance court where the defendants appeared virtually in court because of COVID-19 restrictions. This experience showed me how the judicial system had to adapt quickly even in the midst of a global pandemic to continue their everyday operations and allow public defenders to still get in touch with their clients during a pandemic.

Day 2- Safety Debrief

Today we welcomed a new intern to Dr. Hotz’s team: Maya. Knowing that we would be starting around the same time, Dr. Hotz delayed our mandatory safety debrief until we were together.

Every lab has its fair share of safety hazards, but in many ways the combination of hazards is what defines each lab. After all, one can only say they know what they’re doing in the space once they are certain of what they are not doing, or rather must not do. This way of defining a space– using the safety procedures as negative outlines of the experimental procedures– is written into the department itself. Before working with any materials, I had to review countless standard operating procedure (SOP) debriefs and sign my name in compliance. Strangely, more than merely learning the rules, I gained a better understanding of the role of researchers in the greater university web. Suddenly the lab assistants weren’t just an assortment of people typing away at a computer, but part of a greater agreement with a shared responsibility to one another and to the university. Regardless of the individual motivations, projects, and goals of interns, assistants, and doctoral researchers, it was interesting to find a common thread of purpose– that is, carrying out experiments in an efficient, non-wasteful, and safe manner– that would remain long after I left and even after Dr. Hotz left too.

Some of the safety hazards included: Oxidizers (gasses that can add to or intensify an open fire), nanoparticles (particles that are so small they can diffuse through skin, enter the blood stream, and potentially cause cancer. Largely unresearched health detriments), glass (potentially broken/sharp), and noxious/flammable gasses.

The fume hood prevents us from breathing in loose nanoparticles when making catalysts

One of the safety agreements I had to sig

Day 2: Using the Computer

My second day was much slower than the first day we had. There were fewer patients and one of the therapists was not there as well. Along with cleaning down tables and preparing hot and cold packs for patients, today I learned how to use the computer for different things. Parker showed me how to create a home exercise sheet for patients using HEP2go.com and Jeffrey showed me how the website OptimisPT functioned and how they used it in their day to day work.

HEP stands for home exercise program which makes sense as it creates sheets that demonstrate which exercise(s) a therapist would like a patient to perform at home. When creating a sheet, you first search up the exercise, for example: “rows”, then search for an image that best demonstrates what the exercise the patient needs. You can continue to add exercises and when you are done you click a check mark that brings up a page with all the exercises on it. On this page, HEP2go allows you to fill in information about how many repetitions and sets should be done, whether a patient needs to hold a position and for how long, and how many times a day the exercise needs to be done. The website is an extremely useful source that the therapists at Response Physical Therapy use for every patient.

Later in the day, Jeffrey showed me how they use OptimisPT. OptimisPT is the website they use for all their patient information. It has so many functions that I can’t describe them all. There is a “schedule” tab that gives you a calendar-like view of all the patients that are to come in that day. Under the “home” tab it gives a list of the patients’ names in the order they will be coming in. When you click on a patient’s name, it pulls up their profile and has a long set of pages on the left-hand side. Each page is for something else such as patient’s evaluation, additional evaluation, insurance related things, etc. All these items need to be complete for a patient on a certain day as legal documentation. It is also useful for the therapist themselves as they are able to take notes on what the patient says and can make any observations or take measurements and write these down as well. I helped type down measurements for Jeffrey has he performed an evaluation on a new patient. He would measure the force of different things such as right and left arm abduction and I would type is down for him in the “additional evaluation notes” section.

Day 2

Today we started again at around 8am. After getting into scrubs and getting our official ID badges, we headed into surgery.

I saw two surgeries today, both performed by Dr. Boulton. The first one was another valve replacement, but it was a little bit more invasive than the TAVR I saw twice yesterday. The patient went on general anesthesia and the chest was opened by sawing through the sternum and exposing the heart. The aortic valve was being replaced so the patient had to go on bypass. This is when a machine works as the heart and lungs so that the heart can stop beating while the surgery is taking place. This procedure lasted about 2 1/2 hours. After the surgery ended, we took a quick lunch break, then headed back to the OR to watch another of Dr. Boulton’s surgeries. This second surgery was a triple coronary artery bypass. Again, the patient was placed on general anesthesia and the chest was opened to expose the heart. The coolest thing about this procedure was the heart never stopped beating as it was being operated on. The artery used for the bypass was harvested from the leg which I also got to see. This surgery lasted about 4 1/2 hours, and we stayed for the whole thing. In both of Dr. Boulton’s surgeries, he wore a camera on his head so that when he looked down, everything that he saw displayed on a screen which we could see from inside the OR. After this surgery ended, we called it a day and left around 5:30.

Day 2 – Integrated Pain Solutions: Mass Spectrometry!!

Our second day was packed with activities! Upon arrival, Liya and I met Dr. Taylor, the founder and president of Integrated Pain Solutions. We had the opportunity to sit with him and ask as many questions as we wanted. After spending over an hour speaking with him, both Liya and I learned a lot – not just about his business and his story but also about the importance of discovery throughout our college process and future career endeavors.

We were later introduced to two other scientists, Krystle and Ashleigh, who were working on urine samples in the labs. Coming from Memorial Day Weekend, they were extremely busy yet spent time showing us the procedural work and, again, answering many questions we had.

Although observing their work was educational, my favorite part of the day was the hands on experience in the lab with hemp flowers. Dr. Sean guided us through the lab procedures and taught us how they isolate the CBD and THC compounds. We used several chemicals, centrifuges, vortex machines, pipets, and a tandem mass spectrometer to study these compounds in the flowers and hemp oil. As we watched the machine warm up, Sean explained the various components of the device from the remove computer controls to the highly pressurized gas chamber. We were unable to analyze the results since we ran out of time at the end of the day, but tomorrow, we will resume our work and learn how to analyze the data.

It was somewhat exhausting to learn all the new information, yet studying hemp and the various cannabinoids is a fascinating field and an unparalleled experience that has taught me so much more about pain solutions. With what I learned today, I am excited for our next two days at IPS and learning more about mass spectrometry!

Day 2 – First Real Work Assignment

I started off the day meeting with Liz, who is the manager of product, and Adam, my peer intern in the office. We discussed a bit more about the company on the customer end of things with conferences and trade shows. Then I met with Kris, the senior marketing consultant, who elaborated on surveys during trade shows and conferences. She gave me some surveys from the past conference in San Antonio, Texas which I organized and filed. I then met with Mo, the contract management consultant, who deals with the legal side of the marketing team. There I learned about SOWs and MSAs which are the documents outlined with customers through contract administration and compose a general contract. He also deals with delegate authority agreements, which is the government involvement side of health care. After my meetings ended, I organized some documents and filed them for April, a member of the marketing team. Then I had a meeting with Namrita, the product marketing consultant, who produces Flash documents: a written monthly compilation of new products, trends, announcements from competitor companies or the market in general.

After my lunch break, where I walked down a few blocks to a local restaurant, I returned to the office and had a meeting with Tina, Liz, and Kris. There we reviewed a heatmap, a document which diagrams HMHS’s offerings to customers and prospective customers. Thereafter I wrote a RFP (request for proposal) which is a request send to prospect vendors that could offer potential support to the larger HMHS company. Within the document, I outlined HMHS and RFP review, RFP instructions, HMHS scope of work, all of which are meant to leverage agency support to develop marketing strategy. I wrote the document for the rest of the work day in the office until 4:30, then finished it up in the hotel to email off to Tina and Liz for further review tomorrow morning. I also spent some time tonight preparing questions and organizing my thoughts for my meeting tomorrow with Mary Edwards who is the Senior Vice President of Commercial Markets.

*The second photo is of my schedule, and is meant to demonstrate the dynamic nature of the office, and how fluid and ever-changing meetings are.

Day 2

Today was my second day at RTI International and I stated the day off with a meeting with around 25 RTI employees from around the country to discuss and strategize about global health. Everyone discussed what they did at RTI and the different projects they have worked on, and it was very interesting to hear all the different things RTI covers from biostatistics to epidemiology. After they explained what every section did and what they were currently working on, the group discussed different foundations and grants. Since RTI is a non profit they rely on government spending and grants. This was an all day meeting, however, I left after this part since I was going to do work in the lab. After I ate lunch I went to the lab and pipetted different buffer solutions that would later be sent to a lab to analyze. I pipetted 2 ml of each solutions into a 2 ml vile using an 1000 micro liter pipettor. Over all, it was a great day having been able to sit in on a meeting and do lab work!!

Walk West: Day 2

This morning I woke up ready for another day at work and also being another year older! Today, I did not have to go in to the office until 10, so sleeping in was especially rewarding. When I first got to the office, I had time to sit down and read other people’s blogs about what they’ve been doing. For the next couple of hours I started working on an excel spreadsheet where I entered in names, emails, and the organizations that client belonged to. At around 12, I was actually fortunate to be able to go into the NC State campus and meet up with Luke and Suki for some yummy Chipotle. We got to catch up with each other and hear about what the other person was doing during their day. For the remainder of the day, I finished going through the directory and added all the names to the spreadsheet. By 5’oclock I had entered around 328 names – a productive day to say the least! Since that had kept me typing and busy all day, I was able to go home after that!

Day 2 – Marketing and Listing Appointments

Today was a complete different experience than yesterday, and it was great! Tommy and I started our day off at 10:30am with a brief review of 919 realty’s social media like instagram and twitter. We decided to take on the task of revamping their social media because Mrs. Burkett felt like our young knowledge would be useful in making their social media more attractive to the younger generation who are buying these new family homes to live in. Mrs. Burkett also assigned us a fun task of creating a calendar, we would put days in the calendar to boost spirit in the office like chocolate day or pajama day. After our morning of marketing Tommy and I drove to our first listing appointment where we met Mrs. Dona. Tommy and I learned so much about preparing your house for selling, how to find the right price for your house, how the market is reacting now, and how little housing there is in the triangle. It was very interesting and Mrs. Dona’s client was kind enough to let us sit in the meeting and see her beautiful home and what renovations, if any, she needed to do in order to prepare for selling. Today was an exciting day, and I cant wait for tomorrow!