Dr. Siegel was still on vacation today so her office was closed. You guessed it, I watched some YouTube videos to try and gather some more information. Today I decided to watch some videos on dental schools to try to figure out what would be some good options for me. I learned that some good schools for dentistry are, UCLA, University of Maryland, UNC, and NYU. I wasn’t too aware of options outside of state so it was helpful to learn what was out there.
Tag: unc
Day 2
I had a very busy and exciting day today. In the morning, I had the amazing opportunity to tour the UNC Dental School with Dr. Mac and four other students doing dentistry related work experiences. My favorite part was doing the SIM lab with orthodontist, Dr. Frazier, where we got to put the rubber bands on fake sets of teeth! It was so cool to be doing hands-on activities. We got to ask lots of questions to an admissions worker and got to eat lunch and go on a tour with current dental students. It was so amazing getting to see what their lives are like and the amazing facilities they get to learn in.
The second half of my day I was back in Dr. Siegel’s office. Once again, it was very busy. The most interesting part was seeing not one, but two patients get numbing shots in their gums with pretty big needles. They both were getting cavities filled so they needed numbed gums to not feeling the drilling. It was pretty scary looking but Dr. Siegel was very reassuring to the patients the whole time which made me feel better. We ended the day with some charting which is very important to see because patients’ charts need to be correctly updated for the next time they come in.
Days 7 and 8
Wednesday was super uneventful, I really just took the day to continue to read Jackendoff’s book (as referenced in my day 4 post, if you’re interested!).
Today, however, I had my second meeting with Professor Terry in Chapel Hill. We talked a lot about how the mystery of language acquisition is central to the study of linguistics. No matter what specialty you take in the field, the question of how children learn their first language so easily informs linguists of all types. For example, researching or helping people with language deficiencies (as a speech language pathologist would) exposes what structures we use to define “normal” language. Additionally, I talked to Professor Terry about what his typical workday is like and learned that professors do a lot more than teach, especially at a research institution like UNC.
This program has been a really great way for me to start to get my foot in the door of linguistics. While the beginning of the summer is a logistically challenging time of the year for professors, making my placement a little untraditional, I really learned a lot over the last two weeks and I made some important contacts that will be able to help me continue to inquire about the field through my senior year and my college decision process. Language is a beautiful, uniquely human quality that I can’t wait to continue to learn about as I further my studies.
linguistics / lɪŋˈgwɪs tɪks /
Tim Werner – Day 8
The final day! It has been a great time, and I’m sad it’s over. I’ve learned and seen a lot, but the most important part was that it was an unforgettable experience. To wrap up my time at Boshamer Stadium, we did some final field work before Carolina practiced and the rest of the NCAA teams arrived for the upcoming Super Regionals this weekend. Tomorrow they will all begin practices, so the field needed to be in pristine condition. Once that was finished, I went to a lunch meeting with Casey. We met with a man who is in charge of designing and building every field/athletic facility at UNC and other large D1 schools. It was really interesting to learn about his process. He worked at UNC for 30 years, dealing specifically with UNC’s fields and facilities, but now he started his own company working and traveling to universities all around the nation. Great guy! After the lunch meeting, we went over to the brand new, state of the art soccer/facility, which he built. It was his first time seeing it in person, so it was cool to hear his reaction on the final product. From there, there wasn’t much to do, so I said my goodbyes, took one last look at the beautiful Boshamer Stadium, and headed home. The guys there were all super nice to me. Again, they told me to come back and visit anytime, and, if I went to school at UNC, I would have a job! I really lucked out. It’s sad that it’s over, but all good things have to come to an end at some point. Till next time Carolina! As always, It’s a great day to be a Tar Heel.
Peace out.
Tim Werner – Day 7
Today might have been the best day of my internship yet. There wasn’t much to do at Boshamer Stadium (baseball), so I went with my host, Casey (the Director of Turf Management and Athletic Fields/Stadiums), to prepare the football practice fields for an upcoming camp. My job was to drive a gator with a set of large brooms over the turf to groom it and to ensure the field was in perfect condition. Then, we measured out the grass football field and painted it so it would be game ready. Also while we were there, we fixed an electrical issue that caused the field lights not to turn on! For lunch, we went to Suttons Drug Store which is a fantastic, old food counter on Franklin Street that only the locals know about. I’ve been several times before and was dying to go back. After lunch, the real fun started. Since there wasn’t much to do at the fields, Casey took me on a tour of all of the athletic facilities. Boy are their athletics loaded! First, I took a tour of the brand new Lacrosse and Soccer stadium. They just built brand new locker rooms and facilities there, so I got to go inside and look around. Then we went over to the women’s basketball stadium. I saw their locker room too, but also one of the campuses main equipment rooms. I was in there for only a couple minutes, but I saw at least 10 things that I wanted! the players get so much free merchandise! From there we went to the football stadium. I got a look at their locker room, weight room, equipment room, living room, their tunnel onto the field (which I got to go on), and their media room. They had so many rooms, and everything was so nice! While I was there, I met the defense coach Dre Bly. He played in the NFL for over ten years and is in the NFL Hall of Fame. I even got to play mini basketball with him afterward. After we got done at football, we went over to the Dean Dome. That is where the Mens basketball team plays. Similarly, I went into their locker room, film room, bath room area, living room, and I even went out onto the court! There, I met the assistant coach Hubert Davis. He had a very lengthy and successful career in the NBA! All in all, today was a fantastic day because I was able to contribute a lot to the fields, but also because I got super rare access to all of the stadiums and the behind the scenes areas! I am super sad that my internship is coming to an end, because I am having so much fun. However, Casey said that if I go to school at UNC then he could get me a part-time job at the fields! Haha! It’s a great day to be a Tar Heel.
Tim Werner – Day 6
Today was another quiet day at UNC. The baseball team had their first practice today since they clinched a spot in the Super Regionals Sunday night. The majority of the morning was spent preparing the field for practice and ensuring that it was in pristine condition in every way possible. Once the field was all set, we went down to the new field hockey stadium and we blew all of the leaves off of the turf. After that, we went over to the new indoor football facility (a picture of it is on my Day 1 post) and we blew off trash, papers and anything else that got on the turf. We finished that a little early, so we picked up a football and played catch. It was really cool to be able to use the same facilities that incredible athletes use. From there, we got lunch. Following lunch, I sat in on a staff meeting that went over the budget and upcoming projects. It was super interesting to be able to listen to what they might build to add on to their athletic facilities. I even got to give my opinion! Anyways, today was a great day. I learned a lot and I had fun doing it. The people I get to work with are super nice to me as well. It’s a great day to be a Tar Heel!
Tim Werner – Day 5
Today was a short day, but still a great one. Friday thru Sunday the first round of the College World Series playoffs took place at Boshamer Stadium at UNC. The Tar Heels won the regional Sunday night, which means that this upcoming weekend, UNC will be hosting the next round of the playoffs – the super regionals. Since the Heels won last night, the coach gave them the day off of practice. This meant this it was our, the grounds crew, time to rebuild the field. Four D1 teams tore up the field during 6 games and a heavy rainstorm on Friday. Today, we were tasked with tearing apart the mound, the home plate, and both bullpens. This consisted of removing all of the dirt on top, scraping the hardened clay, applying new clay and then new soft dirt as a top layer. We started around 8:30 and we finished around noon. Since the team didn’t have practice, there was nothing else for us to maintain or work on. So, we headed home! It’s a great day to be a Tar Heel!
Tim Werner – Day 4
The games are underway at Boshamer Stadium at UNC! Today I began the day by setting up the field for the first tournament game and made sure everything followed NCAA regulations. There were many officials from NCAA who were checking every tiny detail of the stadium and telling us what we needed to do to ensure fair and legal play. After this, we had some down time before UNC and UNCW would come out to warm up before their game at 2. We had lunch catered for us and we had to wear special event shirts. I felt really cool because I could walk anywhere I wanted and I could go into the staff only tent, park in the reserved parking, go underneath the stadium and in the locker room, and go on the field. I am really happy that I chose this as my WEP because so far it has been a really cool experience that I would never have been able to do otherwise. The first game was in the final inning, the game was tied and runners were on the bases and UNC was batting – they were about to win. Then it started pouring and there was lightning. So, we had to pull the tarp over the field. I have always seen other people do this when I’ve been to pro or college games, but it was really fun to be able to do it myself. While it was raining, we sat in the dugout and talked to the team. They were upset about the rain delay. The game was delayed for two hours and it still is, so I headed home. I am not sure if they will be able to fit in the second game tonight, so I think they will have to postpone it until tomorrow. In the end, I had another fantastic day at the baseball stadium. The people are great, and the job is great. It’s a great day to be a Tar Heel.
Day 3!
Today I took the hike to UNC-Chapel Hill to meet with linguistics professor Dr. Michael Terry. After parking off of Franklin St and successfully navigating my way to the Smith Building (truly a feat for someone as directionally challenged as I am), Dr. Terry and I sat down to talk about our respective interests in linguistics. Dr. Terry was a mechanical engineering graduate student when he took his first linguistics course, which sparked a new interest which led to his pursuing his Ph.D. It’s really cool to hear from people who arrived at their linguistic curiosity in ways much different than I did.
A specific field within linguistics that I am interested in is language acquisition, both of a first language and foreign ones. While this is not Dr. Terry’s concentration (he works primarily with semantics), he had some really interesting insight for me into how this process really works. Dr. Terry explained to me that in any language, sounds are grouped into mental categories that often fly unnoticed for native speakers. For example, the p sound in “Paul” and “stop” are actually two distinct sounds, but English speakers categorize them together making them nearly indistinguishable from one another. However, these same two sounds are completely and identifiably separate for Hindi speakers, just as how p and b are totally different sounds for English speakers. This is why its often difficult to drop an accent when learning a foreign language; the acquisition of a second language requires you to identify and reclassify sounds that are not intuitively different. However, despite the distinction between these two sounds being lost on adult speakers, babies as old as 8 months have been seen in studies to be able to identify the distinction between the sounds before they are verbal, opening up more questions about how much of language is genetic or learned.
Dr. Terry also introduced me to one of his ongoing research projects about the impact of dialect differences between Standard Classroom English (SCE) and African American English (AAE) on 2nd graders in testing. The specific syntactical difference tested was the marking of the third person singular, i.e. she bakes. The addition of that –s at the end of the verb is present in SCE but not in AAE, and this small letter has a surprisingly significant impact on AAE-speaking children. In fact, when Dr. Terry and his team designed math word problems that conformed to the descriptive grammar of AAE, students performed up to 10% better– a whole letter grade. This finding leads to bigger questions about misdiagnosing attention issues or math deficiencies in young students due to a factor that is completely unrelated to their ability to do math. This research was a really cool example of the scientific aspect of linguistics that makes it particularly interesting to me.
Dr. Terry lent me his copy of Patterns in the Mind by Ray Jackendoff (one of the first linguistics books he read), which I am really looking forward to reading before I meet with him again next week. Go Heels, Go Linguistics!
Tim Werner – Day 3
The battle for a spot in the College World Series has begun. The regionals are now underway at Boshamer Stadium in Chapel Hill! Today I spent the day monitoring and maintaining the field as teams practiced all day. It was really cool to see all the teams and to meet the coaches. We worked with the operations crew to aid them in setting up the “front of the house” stuff that all of the fans will see. Also, we had to hang a lot of “NCAA” banners and wall stickers because since it is a televised NCAA event, it is regulation. It was a really busy day today, but we are all ready for the games to begin tomorrow. They’ve put me to work doing various jobs on and off the field including watering the grass, placing sod, raking the infield, posting NCAA advertisements, and a lot more. Towards the end of the day, we had to go over to the football stadium and get a refrigerator and relocate it into the baseball locker room. Tomorrow the first game is at 2pm, so everyone will be rushing around in the morning getting everything ready for all of the fans to come! It’s a great day to be a Tar Heel.
