Week 4 @ Continuum pt.1 (bonus week!)

I finally decided on a college! I officially accepted my offer to UIUC and I’m so relieved to be done with being confused and uncertain. Now that the decision is made, I can just focus on being excited and meeting people online and whatnot. I joined the Snapchat Community for UIUC class of 2027 and so I’ve been making some new friends who are also freshmen. Basically, being in the college community shows a list of everyone who’s in the community and you can add people that you think would be fun to talk to, and you can add a post to the community story for everyone to see. There are only about 650 people on the community, but UIUC’s Freshmen class is usually pretty close to eight or nine thousand, so there really aren’t a lot of people on there comparatively. When I first joined the community, I made a post basically saying that I was possibly looking for a roommate and that I’m a Cognitive Science major and interested in living in a specific dorm. A few people added me from that post, and one of them I’m starting to get to be pretty decent friends with! We both want to live in the same dorm building, and we seem to have a lot in common. I told her about how I want to join a Dungeons and Dragons club, and she said she’s never played, but that it sounds super fun. She told me about a blood club which basically organizes blood drives and stuff like that and I thought that sounded pretty interesting so I’m really hoping we either end up rooming together or at least seeing each other once we get on campus. It’s sort of interesting thinking about all of the logistical factors of becoming someone’s roommate. For example, you have to coordinate when you both wake up and go to sleep so that you don’t bother each other. 

Aside from meeting new people online, during my actual project at Continuum, I’ve been continuing to help organize donations. On Monday I sorted out more word association cards and then yesterday I did more organization with piles of toy animals. Slowly I’ve been able to make a pretty big dent in the pile of stuff. Today, I picked up all of the loose small toys and put them in bags with similar stuff. Now everything is organized into neat boxes, and the next step is to figure out where to store everything. It’s really nostalgic looking through all of the toys and books they use here at continuum because so many of these are things I used when I was little. 

Overall, this week is going pretty well except that I feel like I don’t have enough to do. I’ve spent several hours today not really doing much because everybody has been busy and didn’t know what I could help with. Today, Kayla had to deal with payroll and there was an issue with paid time off where the employees showed that they had more available time off than they really did. So Kayla had to take away some of their PTO because the company can’t afford to let it slide. It’s gotta be a really difficult situation because I bet it’s annoying realizing that you don’t have any PTO left when you thought you were good. I haven’t had a lot of direction today so I’ve been reading a lot. I don’t want to seem like a slacker, but there just isn’t enough for me to help with at this point. Everyone at continuum is sort of in a perpetual state of running around like chickens with their heads cut off (their words not mine). There’s always a new issue with insurance or parents or a new family, and everyone here is working with a kid the whole time. Kim and Kayla end up having to take whatever time they can get to clear up administrative work.