Senior Projects

This week has been largely the same as the last, scanning documents and reading through articles, but there has been notable progress. I finished the first newsletter and took down an entire deck at one of the properties! I also attended a (pretty uneventful) luncheon on Monday.

On Friday I assisted with renovations at several properties. I tore out a shower and moved the chunks of drywall & nails back to the truck at one house. I also moved a washing machine from the basement of the other property into the yard so it could be replaced and assembled a railing for the front of the house. I’m still sore… (I guess this didn’t publish for some reason so I’ll do it now)

Tuesday 4/2:

Hello! I hope everyone is having a great second week of senior projects! Here are some updates and what I did for the first part of my second week. I will update on Friday afternoon with the rest of my week. Tuesday I worked from 9:00-4:00. The first thing I did, was help set up museum babies, which is a storytelling program for kids 0-2 every Tuesday before the big kid storytime. I helped get chairs and put out rugs with Andy, who works the front desk of the kids clubhouse. He is really funny and gave me my tour of the clubhouse and he told me, “Yeah, you know feel free to play and interact with the kids, especially if you want to. I would, ya know, just ask the parents for permission to make sure it’s okay. Sometimes parents might not want their kid interacting with strangers, especially if he is a tall, adult man with a beard.” In case you didn’t get it, Andy is a tall, adult man with a beard. He is very nice though, and not at all creepy! Julie read for museum babies and then we had a guest storyteller for the second portion of storytime. Her name is Maria Beaver Hussman and she is super nice! She is a Native American, I forget which tribe, though. She works basically as a freelancer going around to different programs and storytelling and crafting with little kids. She is super interactive and great with children, and I think she would be a really good potential guest at one of the lower school gatherings. After the story the kids did a coloring craft. Then I worked until noon around the clubhouse interacting with families, cleaning up, and handing out stickers to kids. As I was walking in the main room to go on my lunch break, I saw Suzi and smiled and waved at her and she said, “it looked like I was having way too much fun,” LOL. And I am having soooo much fun! Anyone who acts like museums are boring and the people who work at them are boring socially awkward weirdos are COMPLETELY WRONG. Everyone I have met here is so fun and interesting! At 1:00 until 4:00 I had a staff meeting and debrief (I just know Dr. Urbano is jumping up and down once he’s read that!). We talked through some different upcoming exhibits and brain stormed titles for the LGBTQ+ exhibit coming to the museum in June. One I came up with was “Color Me Stoked,” which I would say is a pretty good title and also a reference to the 80s movie “Heathers,” which is considered an iconic movie by a lot of folks in the LGBTQ+ community. We also did this thing with our table mates where we looked at this historical photograph and came up with as many questions as we could within 3 minutes. Then we took them and labeled if they were close ended or open ended and then chose our top three and tried to turn another 3 into the opposite type of question so if it was open ended make it closed ended and vice versa. Another funny story about this was that we were asked to introduce ourselves and answer this fun question since I didn’t know a few people like Karla, Ellie, Ryan, and Maria. I had briefly met Ellie and Maria, and saw Ryan, but didn’t fully meet them or work with them yet. So, the fun question was, “What is your go to karaoke song?” This was my answer, “Well, I’ve actually never sung karaoke, but I would love to. Last year, me and my friends were going to do karaoke after our junior prom, but if you’ve ever met a teenager then you know about how good they are at coordinating and planning events,” this made them laugh pretty hard, I continued, “So, if I were to sing karaoke, if I were feeling sentimental and wanted to do a more sad song I would do “Careless Whisper,” by George Michael,” this earned some claps and whoops, and approving nods, “but,” I continued, “If I wanted to do something fun, and my dad would kill me if he heard me saying this to a room full of adult professionals, I would do “Hot Legs” by Rod Stewart.” This earned a lot of laughs and Emily K (not the storytelling Emily a different Emily. Emily K has red hair, the other Emily has brown hair) and she said, “Oh my god! I love you! You are the best highschooler, I’ve ever met, and I work with teenagers all day. Those were such good answers.”

Wednesday 4/3:

Wednesday I work from 9:30 to 4:30. I was originally supposed to be on site at the Soldiers Memorial Museum and work as a greeter, but this got changed around, so instead I got to work in the teaching collection. The teaching collection is basically a bunch of storage items that have been obtained from the Historical Society or the archives of the museum. What I did was label each item, color code them with stickers, and enter the new information on the spreadsheet. I worked with another volunteer named Karla (different Karla then the Karla from Tuesday). Karla is retired and has been volunteering at the museum for a few years. She is really funny and made a joke about this naked lady mannequins. Kat was like, “I don’t know why these are down here!” and Karla goes, “Well there for the field trips to show the kids!” Karla used to work at Fontbonne University (RIP), which is where my mom and aunt both went in the 90s. I asked if she knew Christine Alt then Schuba and Patricia Schuba and she was like “I think so!” and I showed her a picture and she was like, “oh my god, I am pretty sure I know them!” She was the head of housing, student government, and student events. Both my mom and aunt were part of SGA and an academic sorority so she probably worked with them at some point! Today, was also my mom’s birthday, so we are going to make these like Chinese dumpling tacos for dinner and a stir fry, and maybe get some new ice cream from Dierbergs that is ooey, gooey, butter cake flavor, it is delicious! Then this weekend we will probably go out to eat and I am going to make her a coconut cream pie recipe from The Hawthorne Inn in Labadie. From 11:00 until 2:00 I will work at the key bistro as a desk greeter, and then I will have a bit of a break, and I think after that go back down to the teaching collection to sort more items. I have also started a Substack, which is like a personal blog you can post writing on (Maybe I am turning into Dr. Urbano at this point. I am attending debriefs, wearing cargo pants, and now I have my own blog, will I grow a beard next? Tune in next week to find out!) anyways there’s this writer on there that I discovered last year off of Instagram named Viv Chen. She writes mostly about fashion and pop culture so I sent her a message. She has a pretty decent following and guess freaking what? She replied to me and started following me and said that she was excited to read my content!!! AHHHHH!!!! I WAS SOOOO EXCITED AND STAR STRUCK!!!! I also discovered this week that I actually do like musicals. I have been listening to “The Heathers” soundtrack and I am convinced I could play a really good J.D. (a bad boy turned just straight crazy boy, who has severe mommy issues), Kurt and/or Ram (two really dumb and sexist football players), Veronica (the one Heather who isn’t named Heather and the main character who dates J.D.), or Heather Duke (she is the Heather who wears green, but later begins wearing red. She is definitely the snobbiest of the Heathers and very power hungry, while I am neither of those things, I do have a competitive nature and what some would describe as a brash attitude so I think I could play her really well). I sung some of the songs for my family. My dad said nothing because he was busy eating hot dogs and he loves hot dogs so that’s all he could focus on even though, angelic melodies were being crafted in the living room. My mom said it was good, but that the content of the song was awful. And my brother said, “Yeah, that was pretty good. You could probably be in a musical, after five years of vocal training!” He did add though that I could definitely get casted in plays, so now I am determined to be in a muscial at Webster just to prove him wrong. I can be a very spiteful person and competitive at times, with a natural drive to prove people wrong, which is also why I am considering minoring or even doing a second major entirely of philosophy because a lot of the people, but mostly men in the philosophy department are very stuck up! So, my goal would be to work with them and be like “Oh your favorite philosopher is Socrates or Aristotle? Oh, that’s so cute! Mine? My favorite philosopher are Diogenes because he was crazy, Nietzsche because he knew that life could feel like hell, and William “Bill” S. Preston, esq. and Ted “Theodore” Logan from Wyld Stallyns because they are two teenage California boys who have a better life outlook then weird, creepy Greek men and will unite our world with the power of their most excellent, most triumphant, non heinous, totally not bogus, harmonic music!” Then I would see what they would say. My mom also told me to “never date a philosophy major and run for the hills,” if one tries to ask me out. I can’t confirm or deny if they are little meanies yet, but only time will tell, but maybe if I do date a philosophy major he would be nice, or I could convert him to kindness, my favorite religion. I could fix him, which is honestly so bad to say, but at least it’s about an 18-22 year old man who is a philosophy major instead of Coriolanus Snow from “The Hunger Games” who is a fictional character, grows up to be a murder and dictator, who enjoys throwing kids into a death battle and watching them die, is threatened by a teenage girl because she basically is coming for his brand, brainwashes and tortures her boyfriend to literally hate her and want to kill her, and is at fault for so many other war crimes. At least I didn’t say that, unlike someone. *cough, cough, Maddy Hassan, cough*. I am just kidding and joshing around no hate, no shade, I get it girl.

Today I went to the botanical gardens in Madrid. Lucía was at school today so I went alone and it was my first time using public transport alone. I used the bus and the metro. I was pretty stressed but it ended up being pretty fun trying to figure out where to go. It was also pretty calming because I could go where ever I wanted and didn’t have to rely on anyone. Tulips where the main flowers that were in bloom. There was also a bonsai exhibit open at the time. 

Today I learned about chinos. As Chinese immigrated to Spain they opened small convinient stores. The word “chino” may seem offensive but it is simply a common word to refer to these stores. They have all types of snacks, drinks, and household items. I always saw them at every corner but I never knew that they had a name for them. They all look exactly the same but they are not a chain. 

I also had churros and porras with chocolate from the most famous place in Spain, San Ginés.

Monday – Lifetime West County shadowing Chris Lichtenberger.

A: Business Scope – As Vice President of LifeTime Business Development, he told me about the two businesses he works on.

1. Medical/Health Insurance,
2. 2.Corporate membership.

B:When he showed me the sales performance of his team members, he told me some of the overall changes in sales patterns during the year.

1. Jan is the most popular month because people gain weight during Oct – Dec Thanks giving, Christmas, etc.
2. Then the sale dies down during March and April because people lose motivation and the weather is good outside.

C: From 10- 11am, We organized data from a sales contest aimed at contacting members who haven’t visited the gym in a while and motivating them to return.

1. The distribution of grouping is determined by the number of lapsed members: Tier 1 _500+, Tier 2_100-499, Tier3_99-.
2. Then he added some comments.
3. I think his work is not that hard to do, so I asked him have you ever used AI to do your work. And he said no, but eventually one day he will.
4. Cuz In Tier 3, There’s one club that only have one person to contact and the completion rate is 100%, and another club has 95 members to contact but with a 45% completion rate. And this is debatable, and AI might not notice that. But eventually it will.

D: After Lunch

1. He showed me the LifeTime Stock, and it’s volatile.
2. He explained the reasons behind it and some inside tips that will definitely help for my future investment on LifeTime.

E: Monthly Meeting with his group members

1. Talking about the performances of each member based on their sale data that I saw already before the meeting.

Tue – Fri: Coursera Finance / Accounting. The course is alright, Quizzes are hard and questions in there are AI proof. I usually get 40 – 50% right for the first time, and later I struggle to reach 70% for a pass. Chris was out on Wednesday.

So, I’ve decided that I will post three times a week, maybe not every week, but I will post a plan during the weekend for the upcoming week, then post midweek, and at the end of the week, so they’re not as long all at once. I always have Mondays off, since the Museum is closed, originally I was going to work at May’s Place a vintage store owned by Katie May in St. Louis, but since I am already meeting the 30 hours a week requirement and sometimes going over it, I decided to drop this, since it’s not really helping me with my major or future career, I just thought it would be cool. So, those are my executive, no cap decisions.

This is what my coming week will look like: Tuesday, I will have museum babies, a daytime program, and then a facilitated dialogue. These are like discussions with the staff about internal runnings within the museum, I may actually get to lead one of these in the future! Wednesday, I will be at the Soldier’s Memorial Museum where I have orientation and then I will work as the desk greeter. Thursday, I will be at the Key Bistro Restaurant as a greeter, then either in the clubhouse or Soldier’s Memorial, and then I will be working the night even. Finally, Friday I have storytelling at the kids’ clubhouse, then I will spend the rest of the day either in the Key Bistro, SMM, or the Clubhouse, and just helping out wherever it’s needed.

I am really looking forward to the rest of the project and I could see myself doing this as a career. I like it because you’re on your feet and get to move around, which is refreshing compared to being at school, where you have to spend so much time sitting. I also feel like at school you are always being given work to do like even if it’s just busy work, where as at work if I finish everything I just get some downtime and get to take a break before the next new thing in my shift. Also, I went down a rabbit hole ahead of starting senior projects and looked way back on the senior projects blog to see what other kids did. And something that both Natasha Douglass and Elliot Voekel said, and a lot of others too, was that they were really surprised with how adults were so impressed with teenagers or interns just doing basic professional things like being on time, shaking your hand, introducing yourself, not being on your phone, etc. and I have noticed this also. At the career fair, I spoke to two women at a booth who help run an elementary school called Atlas School. I gave them my contact information and I would consider working with them, and I had mentioned that I was 17 in case that meant I wouldn’t be able to work there. And the woman said I still could, and that it was refreshing to see a highschooler who was so mature. I guess I can see why people would be impressed with this because there are some just downright cruel people in the world, so when someone is polite, understanding, and just willing to help it can be a breath of fresh air. In other news, I have also started a Substack blog to post my writing on because there is a writer’s position available at the museum that I may apply to this summer and figured that would be more professional than my Wattpad account, LOL. If you care to follow them my Wattpad is @bebobwaffles_123 and my substack is @jollyranger867, I post pretty often and if you want to discuss any of my articles or stories I would love to. If I get enough subscribers I can also be paid from Substack, which is super cool. I also plan on setting up an Amazon Kindle account where you could buy my stuff and I would get a partial commission, I just haven’t set it up yet. And last update, I am planning on trying to set my brother up with Elena from the museum because she is single, super cute, smart, funny, and sweet, and I think they’d make a good couple.

This week at McCarthy Leonard & Kaemmerer, I was introduced to everyone in the office and given various projects from different attorneys that worked with different types of cases. Over the past five days I have been working on case summaries for two Supreme Court cases, paperwork for the purchase of a car dealership, reading a memorum of understanding for a company and its ties to the union of United Farm Workers, and other office tasks. The supreme court cases have been the most interesting by far, and reading through them and learning the correct terminology has been the most useful to me. The first case is about the third party exception to the rule that businesses have no duty to protect their invitees from the action of third-party persons while on their property, and it’s actually a pretty good story, but they made me sign three different confidentiality agreements so I’m scared to write about it. The second case is about medical malpractice and the two-year statue of limitations. Overall, I’m learning a lot.

My week started off Tuesday through Friday. I helped manage the pro shop by first taking inventory of all the new items that come in every couple of weeks with Curt Goss, the merchandiser of the year. I then helped Golf pro-Adam fold the clothing professionally, adequately mix and match different pieces in their collections, and unload shipments of golf balls. I also did inventory and put them in their correct spots. I got a tour of the offices I hadn’t seen before, even though I am a member, which was pretty neat. This was on Tuesday; on Wednesday, I learned how to edit videos of the golf pros for the Wednesday weekly update for the members with Video Editor Jessica Fox. Then, on Thursday, I got some tape off a wall that hadn’t come off for a while and became an assistant for golf pro Ryan Martin as he taught lessons outside on the golf range. Today, Friday, was the biggest day of the week so far because of the nice warm weather, and about 270 members came to play golf today. I helped with outside management, guiding members to their specific holes in the course and assisting with any needs of the pros and members. I went out on the course with golf pro-Brooks Morris and ensured the members had a good pace of play, which meant making sure they were playing not too fast or too slow to avoid people waiting or finishing too early. I had a great first week!

Yesterday night I experienced Holy Week. I saw one of the processions and witnessed the ceremony. There are many that go on throughout the day but we watched the last one which is one of the most famous. It was 1am when it passed us. For this one, “ La procesión del silencio” all of the city lights turned off and people remained silent. In this one there was no music but a drum, which only happens in this specific procession, and once the statue, called paso, passed us there where people with chains doing their penitence. 

Today we visited Sacromonte, a village where people live in caves on the side of the mountains. There are different houses for different uses like a blacksmith, sowing, farm animals, and normal housing. Their community also was the main promoter of flamingo.