Category: Uncategorized

Today, we had orientation, getting to know more about CISCO and the employees. Additionally, we learned about CISCO culture. For an instance, they celebrate every little accomplishment and have paid workdays off. I got to meet my mentor, Cassandra Williams, and we talked a lot about Duke and engineering because we shared a lot of common activities.

We learned a lot about our future project. We have to present a pitch saying why this product is necessary at Cary Academy. I think it’s pretty interesting and will help me engage in social skills.

Overall, today was a chill introduction day.

Today I visited Duke Raleigh Orthopedics to shadow Dr. Schweitzer, a foot and ankle orthopedic surgeon. During hospital hours today, the clinic was in session. Dr. Schweitzer and I visited with many different patients with various foot and ankle related injuries. We would them give then a diagnosis and a treatment plan (surgery, physical therapy, referral, or a different treatment). We visited with more than 40 patients during todays clinic hours. Today I learned how to diagnose an Achilles tear and the treatment procedures that go with it it. I was surprised at the number of patients each doctor visited with each day. There was a team of nurses or orthopedic doctors that worked to most efficiently diagnose and treat each patient.

For our first day working at Cisco, we started by meeting Ms. Sandifer in which she gave us a general overview of what to expect throughout the program in addition to general details about Cisco. We also attended several other meetings throughout the day. In the first, we talked about Cisco’s culture. We learned that in the sales department, specifically, they thrive in a competitive yet community-oriented environment. They find a balance between competition and collaboration; they celebrate each other’s accomplish and work together when they need help, but also find motivation in competing.

In another of our meetings, we also talked about the pitch project that we are going to be working on throughout this week and next week. In summary, we are going to be acting as if we are salespersons who work at Cisco and are trying to sell one of Cisco’s architectures to Cary Academy. We are going to have to research our chosen architecture and then determine ways that it can be beneficial to the Cary Academy community. The architectures include Meraki, Data Center, AppDymanics, Umbrella, and Collaboration.

Finally, each member of the Cisco WEP was assigned a mentor. We were able to talk to our mentors about their experiences working at Cisco as well as recommendations for our pitch presentation from a technical perspective. My mentor shared experiences about building systems from the ground up: she worked with creating routers, switches, etc.

Here is a picture of me with my mentor: Ms. Rswaragoundan.

-Grace

Today was my first day working at Representative Harris’s office. On Mondays and Fridays the members of the legislature work virtually so my first day was asynchronous. Today, I received my two assignments for the week. The first was to outline the American Rescue Plan (ARP) guidelines for how states can spend their federal aid, as well as how ARP funds have already been allocated in NC. The second assignment was to write up a report on how North Carolina’s taxes per capita and GDP compares to other states. Today I started on the first task and read through the American Rescue Plan and took notes on the guidelines for how states can spend their federal aid. I am looking forward to going to the legislature in person tomorrow and continuing to work on these cool projects.

 

After a very fun, early morning, caffeine-hyped, carpool drive to Southern Pines (Thanks to JR for not hitting the giant snapping turtle on the road), we had an orientation at Integrated Pain Solutions. We thoroughly enjoyed learning, visualizing, and experiencing how their cannabinoid products are made from the plant to the serum to the bottles to the store within the warehouse.  We loved seeing the machines used to bottle and formulate all the products. A highlight of the day was learning about the chemical structures of cannabinoids and how they work in the body to attach to pain receptors; as well, we got to apply some of Mr. Rushin’s Adv Chem curriculum to real-life by analyzing the cannabinoid structures and how the disconnected Oxygen off the Benzene on the THC makes it different than CBD. Shout out to Alekh for helping JR navigate the Chick-fil-a line.

Today marked our first day working with Mark Self, CEO of Vector Textiles. Vector Textiles is a company that creates chemical-free insect and bite resistant clothing and nets. We started off the day with a meeting where Mr. Self explained what are research topic is, which is to explain the environmental consequences of permethrin, a chemical used in mosquito repellent, in sub-Saharan Africa. Afterwards my groupmates and I held our own meeting where we drafted a plan for the following days, then we finished off the day with individual research. As I learned more about permethrin and some of its effects I realized how easy it can be for products containing harmful chemicals to contaminate the environment, and that once the chemical is in the environment it can easily be exposed to humans, plants, and animals. Therefore it is important that those types of products are carefully regulated.

Today at 10:30 I sat in on my church’s pastoral care meeting where the care and share committee and the clergy at my Church discuss what major events are going on in parishioners’ lives including family issues, health issues, deaths and births so that the church can be a welcoming and safe place for those people. Later, I sat in on the Church’s staff meeting where all the paid staff members gather to discuss how different organizations are working and who needs to do what etc. Then I went with Father Javier to Dorcas Ministries to take a tour of the client services part of Dorcas and learned about how people in crisis can be served. To cap things off I sat down with Javier to discuss his life and work as a priest and learned much more interesting information about community work, Sunday services and time with families who call on him during death and birth.

Today I attended my regular church service at 9am but also read the prayers of the people to the congregation. Afterwards, at 10:15, I visited the mini ministry fair and learned about many different ministries at my church that I didn’t too much about. Finally, from 11:15 to 12:45 I sat down to have a conversation with The rector and my church, Father George. During this conversation I learned about what a priest does throughout the week, how things are organized, how homilies are written and so much more amazing information.

This morning, we started by going over the basics of the company and learning about what the different parts do (clinical, marketing, business development/sales, and administration). We got a brief overview of what the company does, and what reasons a hospital would want to hire them.

After a quick break for lunch, we went into more specifics of the business and talked about what we would want to do for the next two weeks. We learned about the cycle of buying/selling and an overview of PICC lines, midlines, and other methods of vascular access. Tomorrow morning we will begin working on projects and potentially a marketing campaign, and later this week we will have the opportunity to attend a training session for some of the new nurses.

Today was our first day of the Work Experience Program working with Lenovo. We talked with our host, Greyson Davis (the head of the software gaming division at Lenovo), and asked him questions about what it was like to work with Lenovo and with video games, and especially how it’s been working from home for so long.

We spent the rest of our meeting time talking about and learning the basics of NFTs, and discussing their potential applications for gaming and in the real world. NFT stands for non-fungible token, and essentially is a unique, secure piece of data that is stored on the blockchain. These tokens can be transferred – bought and sold like any other physical good. Right now they’re used for things like digital art and collectibles, but in the near future they could be used to securely store things like concert tickets or house deeds.

Today after our meeting, I researched the environmental impact that NFTs and NFT transactions could have.

An image of Cryptopunks, a set of 10,000 unique images that became some of the first ever NFTs