Senior Projects

Thursday:

Thursday, I worked from 12:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. When I first arrived, I packaged up invitations for one of the museum’s upcoming events. I would fold cards, put them in envelopes, and then glue them shut. I think I did this to over 100 invitations (I am not kidding)! Even though a lot of people think it’s boring, I liked it because it was just very easy and sort of gives your mind a break. It was similar to working at the thrift store for community service at school. The second time we went, Mrs. Bryan said something really smart and true and it was like, “You spend all of highschool and college learning these things and you can’t really see a clear cut goal with them, even though they’re paying off. So, with something like this it’s just really simple and there’s a clear cut goal, which makes it really satisfying,” well said, Mrs. Bryan! That morning I also got to meet Ray. Ray is retired and has been volunteering for five years. He is super cool and we talked a lot about my senior project and my future career paths. He is preparing to give his third gallery talk next week on the Dred Scott case. At about 1:15 I finished up the scavenger hunt paper from yesterday and took a bit of a break. Then I got to tour the kids clubhouse with Andy. After that, I got to meet Ryan and Julie. I didn’t talk much with Ryan because he had to run, but I talked a lot with Julie, who also works in the kids clubhouse. She is really cool and asked me different stuff about where I go to highschool, what college I’m going to, senior projects, and what I want to do for a career later in life. She also has some totally sick tattoos. Then for the rest of the afternoon, I took a tour of the kids clubhouse and had some training for my work there Friday with Andy. He was super helpful and nice as well. After that, I had a little downtime than I toured and met with Victoria who works as a data analyst and collector for the museum, so it’s likely I will help her do some surveys in the coming weeks. Lastly, I spent the last portion of my shift helping out at the Thursday Night event from 5:00 – 8:00. Maggie who works in the kids department and for Thursday night gave us the run down. Basically me, and two other volunteers, Tyler and Sophia, helped on the floor level, then greeted guests and handed out surveys. Then we got to watch a talk from authors Richard Rothstein and Leah Rothstein (they are father and daughter) on their book “Just Action: How to Challenge Segregation Enacted Under The Color of Law” and Richard’s solo book “The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America” it was cool to hear about these books since they are pretty big in the history/academia world and it was cool that I was able to know a lot of terms and events from taking U.S. History. They had a Q&A and I really wanted to ask about what it’s like working as a historical scholar/writer and if they have multiple jobs, how they got published, etc. but I wanted to give the opportunity for guests to ask questions and we ran short on time so I didn’t get to. I then thought I would talk to Leah at the book signing, but the line was super long and I was tired so I headed home for the night. It was also cool that I got to talk with Sophia a lot because she is on a research project at the museum and is a junior at Kirkwood Highschool and she was super fun.

Friday:

Friday morning, I finished packing some envelopes from the other day. Then I headed over to the kids’ clubhouse at 9:15 to set up for their story telling program. The story telling program is targeted at young kids and is hosted every Friday morning. Then from 10:30-12:00 we had the actual story time. It was super fun and I got to work with Julie and Maggie, and then also met and worked with a different Emily and Elena, as well as, meet Rachel and Lindsey. After story time and the craft, I spent about an hour at the clubhouse cleaning up and helping families out. Then I worked from 12:00-2:00 at the Key Bistro, the museum’s restaurant with Pierre, Anthony, and Garth. I sat at the front desk and gave menus out. I also brought people drinks and cleaned up after they were done. I got a free meal out of this and I had a burger and fries, which were really good. During the last portion of the day, I was going to help out Kat and Eric (a student at Maryville University), but Kat was out sick and it is better with in person training so I just got to explore the museum. I did get to briefly say hi to Eric, though. Sorry, that these are longer posts and I am tempted to just do three a week so it isn’t all so much (but what else could you expect from the girl who wrote over 25 pages for her research paper, and a 20+ page scripted draft of a “Freaks and Geeks” reboot in a single night?!) even though I only have to do two a week. Some other cool life updates are that I’ve made myself a Substack account to post my writing on, which I will link later. I’ve also been working on writing up a resume for jobs during the summer, getting my housing application together for Webster, which has been a mess! And then lastly, I have recently become obsessed with dance and aerobics for cardio because I don’t like just running that much and I wanted to add in cardio with my strength training. It is so much fun, I dance for like 30 minutes two or three times each day to various up beat 80s and 2000s songs. I think my dad is horrified because he told my mom, “I’ve seen so much of me in her these last few weeks,” and I said “Oh, did you dance and do aerobics in your living room, too?” He replied, “No, I didn’t do any of that goofy S***,”(I am blurring out this EXPLICIT WORD, however, he said the real deal…). I may want to become an aerobics instructor as a side gig because it would legit be so fun! I also think it would be cool because it totally juxtaposes my scholar dreams and also if I would want to be a contestant on “The Bachelor” (also something I would seriously consider. I could promote my writing and books, go pretty far, but probably not be picked and give a devastating heartbroken speech) that would make me so legendary!

Pictures from Wednesday-Friday:

The first week was a lot of learning experiences. I spent it running around 6 different subways meeting the managers as well as fixing maintenance issues at those stores. One example of that was electrical issues in the walk-in coolers. There are 12 subways so I will be at the others next week. The first week was mainly an introduction week learning how to take inventory as well as how to manage the money within those stores.

On these days I continued my project and got involved in their daily meetings(stand up) and their larger meetings with their customer. Although not involved directly with everything, I have learned a great deal just by listening and intaking the information that is being passed along. This Thursday I got to sit in on a meeting with the customer and he introduced me to what he does and the project itself. Later this Thursday the lead for the project went over more specifics of what they do for me to get a better understanding. I have furthered my separate project transferring my code into a different format(node.js). My first week has been more insightful than I initially anticipated and I am very happy with the community and the people around me.

My first few days I started at OmniFederal, which is a private contracting company with the NGA. They mostly work with government clients on projects. They have different teams for each project and I was placed on the Ronin project. The first few days I learned about the company and what they do as well as started my own project that will utilize some of their principles in their project to get me up to speed with what they are working on. The environment has been very welcoming and I have learned more than I initially anticipated.

This week at Riezman Berger I had the opportunity to see two court cases. On Tuesday morning, I followed a litigation attorney into court for a case management discussion with the prosecuting attorney and judge. Luckily, both the lawyers were okay with me going back to the judges chambers with them where I got to meet Hon. Richard Stewart. In the meeting, they settled on mediating in 90 days to try to come to a compromise. If the mediation doesn’t settle anything, they’ll follow up with a jury trial in December. The case itself has to do with a man moving into a neighborhood where his next door neighbor’s three dogs bark their heads off. The man called the cops multiple times on the dogs and ended up filing a lawsuit to get the women to get rid of two out of three of their dogs. The attorney at Riezman Berger is the defendants attorney and he is trying to settle the case without costing his client too much money and not have the lawsuit result in sending the women’s dogs to the pound.

Today I went to the the Alhambra. It was originally constructed as a small fortress by the Muslims but was later converted to a royal palace. Alhambra has many gardens that are loctaed around and in the fortress walls. Today they still grow they same crops that would have been grown at Alhambra years ago. 

In almost every room in the Alhambra there is a fountain. The water was always running because they believed if the water stopped moving then the water would go bad. The constant running water creates a peaceful sound and environment. They are also many large bodies of water because they believed that the bigger the size of water the more power that you have. 

The walls throughout the whole complex have designs on them. They are not individually carved, they used a mold to achieve the look. Stars with eight sides are represented throughout the whole complex as well, on the walls and on the sealing. There is a saying that you are in the seventh heaven which means that you are closest to God, because at eight you get to heaven. This is because if you draw an eight and turn it, it becomes an infinity symbol, representing purity. 

During the first week of my senior project I had expected certain things that would play out during the entire span of these next 9 weeks, only to find out that things will stray from that. My first day started Tuesday, where I met the owner who straight from the bat felt relaxed enough with me to task me with being at the front desk and with every one of their social media posts, as well as letting me do the majority of the behind the scenes that she does. I cleaned, repainted a sign that you see when you first walk in as well as figure out how to do their money system (which meant count the total, log it into their square computer, and jot down the rest of the info back to Chelsea, who’s the store owner.) Straight from the moment I walked in everyone was incredibly welcoming and kind to me, Chelsea had offered to pay for my own digital art course as well as a few blood-born pathogen courses to take so I could get that out of the way before I start my apprenticeship. Overall my choice to stay here during my senior project has been wonderful, I can’t wait to see what happens these upcoming weeks.

During my first couple days working at US Properties I got to know the basics of working in real estate such as what sites to use when looking for properties to buy and what to look out for when you buy a property. I also began working on the company newsletters and converting physical documents into PDFs (very exciting stuff). Other than the occasional renovation, most of my work should be pretty much the same day-to-day so please forgive me if future updates feel too similar.

Wednesday was my first day at the history museum and it was great! I worked from 8:30 to 4:30 and I will give a bit of an outline of what I did. From 8:30-9:30 I was walked through the museum and given some background refresh by Kat Bourek. The museum is opening an exhibit on the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis in April and I got to tour it with her today, and once it is open to the public I will spend a good amount of time working there. Then from 9:30-12:30 Kat, Suzi Reed, and I went to the St. Louis Community College career fair. We just sat at a booth and told college students about our internships and volunteer programs. It was pretty slow, but we had some people interested so that was good! We also got to talk a lot, which was super cool, and they told some really funny stories like how Suzi’s husband loves to rollerskate and she is committed to learning as well. Kat also told this really funny story about how her sister and this old lady got into a car accident. Everything was okay and it was just a minor scratch, her sister had to go to class, and she told the old lady she would contact her. Then the old lady sued her sister for a hit and run and accused her of assault saying that the sister pushed her over! None of it was true, but she wanted to take her to court and her son was also a lawyer. So, then one night the police show up at their parents house and they arrested Kat’s sister and she had to spend a night in jail! Luckily, she was cleared. At 12:30, Suzi and I came back to the museum and talked some to Hanna. Hanna works with Suzi and Kat, and she is also blind and originally from Ethopia and grew up there. She is super funny! At 1:00 we attended a sensitivity training for LGBTQ+ awareness since the museum will have a pride exhibit coming in June. The talk was given by Jess Jones, their job is to go to different companies, schools, and non for profits, and talk about LGBTQ+ awareness. They were a really eloquent and dynamic speaker and the presentation was done really well. While there I also got to meet Mike and Marcia, an older married couple who have been volunteering for eight years, Ellie a K-12 coordinator, Emily and Nora who are also K-12 coordinators, Mike who is an older volunteer and super sweet, and Amanda who I’m not sure what her title was, but she also has a degree in history and said she would be happy to talk to me about career paths and help me look for paid jobs. I also met another coordinator, I forget his name, but he has cerebarl palsy and is in a motorized wheel chair, but he is also super intelligent and one of their lead workers. The last thing I did was explore the galleries and fill out this new worker scavenger hunt. It was a really great first day, since this post is longer than I thought I will probably update on Friday also!

Today I started my trip to Granada. Granada is a city in the south of Spain. We took a speed train to the city, can reach 350 km/h. 

This week is Holy Week in Spain, a religious holiday for Christians. The processions are really famous and in them a group of people carry the “pasos”. These are sculptures that narrate different episodes of Jesus’ death, resurrection…

The processions start in the church and they walk around carrying the pasos for hours, usually pretty late. However, this year some of these processions have been canceled or postponed due to bad weather. 

We visited the Cathedral, which is renaissance (sXVII). It’s known as the luminous Cathedral because it’s all white and golden and it’s got strategic windows and lights so that it’s very well illuminated. After that we went to a café where we had porras, hot chocolate and torrijas (traditional dessert from this time of the year).