Senior Projects

On Thursday we had J.O.Y group, which stands for just older youth. It is a group of elderly woman who meet once a month and do some sort of activity together. Volunteers and Restore St. Louis workers will help pick them up because most of them are unable to drive. For this J.O.Y group we went and saw the movie His Only Son (I totally recommend!) and then had a picnic after. It was such a delight to spend time with them, they were all so sweet and pretty funny too! During the picnic we started singing hymms together, which was definitely the highlight of the week!

For my fourth week of my senior project I was continuing my time at the GM plant in Wentzville. I shadowed various types of engineers this week. I shadowed industrial engineers on Monday and learned how they manage different parts of the plant on an engineering perspective. I was with the stamping IE on Monday. Stamping is the department where they take sheets of metal and form them into the exterior shape of the vehicle. The plant had received new product for the stamping department and it is going to cost the plant more money because on the old system the doors came out vertically, however on the new product the doors come out flat and that is going to cost the plant an extra 1.5 million dollars in labor per year. That is one of the problems that the stamping industrial engineers will have to troubleshoot.

For two of my days this week I was with the controls engineers. The controls engineers are essentially the mechanics of the plant. If there is a problem with any of the robots they will be the people that run down to fix them. When I was with them it was not that busy of a day, which is good because that means the plant is running good. They ended up giving me a tour of the body shop. The GM plant in Wentzville is the only plant to have two body shops. The plant makes vans and trucks. The body shop is where they take all the stamped material and weld it together to form the fully constructed outer body to be sent off to the paint department.

Throughout the rest of the week with Christy, I attended various meetings involving different departments, had one-on-one meetings with different department members, and continued to see what Christy does daily. For example, Christy is the project manager for a new building being created for the company and therefore had to meet with several different groups contributing to the development of the building. I was able to accompany her in all of her meets concerning the construction and updates on the project.

I enjoyed the one on one meetings because I was able to ask each faculty member questions such as: “What do you do for the company?” “How did you enter this role?” and “What education background provided the credentials to be in this position?” I was surprised that despite the variety of roles, a majority of the individuals that I spoke with had a degree in a subject either completely from what they were doing, or slightly related, but only served as direction towards what their occupation became.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time at Benson Hill and it reinforced my goal to become a middle man between software developers and either management or other departments.

While I was at The Sheldon yesterday I helped set up catering for the artist and Sheldon crew. When that was done I was sent to help usher since there wasn’t enough of them. While I was waiting for doors to open I overheard someone talking about a Montessori school. That caught my ear. She then said, “In Saint Albans.” I shot up. I said, “I’m sorry for butting into your conversation but I go to that school!” Turns out she used to teach at Fulton! It was Mrs. Crites! Even though she never taught me, she was excited to see someone from Fulton. We talked for a while before the doors opened then got to ushering. It was a pretty easy show and a very calm crowd so it was easy to deal with. Very good night!

That’s all for now! 🙂

In my last post, I already wrote about my college visit to Mizzou. It was a pretty good visit, but I think I’m leaning towards going to UIUC. This week at Continuum, I spent a lot of time preparing activities on Tuesday. During May, they are doing lots of focus on farm animals and zoo animals. I spent almost four hours cutting and laminating pictures. It was pretty relaxing. Yesterday, I didn’t do a whole lot. Most of the stuff that Continuum is working on right now, is moving their data for each child into a new program. On Wednesday afternoon, Kayla and Kim had a meeting with a new prospective family. This is the second or third step in the intake process and it happens fairly soon after the family contacts Continuum. After this meeting, they will have come up with a general treatment plan, and send it to insurance for approval. Once they get approval, they will start treatment with the child as soon as possible. Another thing I did on Wednesday is help put together walkie talkies. Basically, nobody had had time to read through the instructions and put together the charging station, so I did it.

At the end of Wednesday, and throughout today, there hasn’t been a lot for me to help out with. I’ve been mostly just observing, but I’ve been here long enough for me to know pretty much what the schedule is like so it can be a little boring.

Kayla and Kim told me that once I’m 18, I can get certified as an RBT (registered behavioral technician) and potentially work at Continuum. I’ve been thinking about it as a job, and I’d say that this topic is whats interesting to me, but I don’t know how I would act around the kids when working one on one with them. This job takes a lot of patience, and I’m not entirely sure that I have that patience. Also, I don’t particularly like the idea of having to fight with The kids to get them to eat, and having to take them to the bathroom and whatnot. Regardless, the job pays pretty reasonably, and has some benefits, so I might consider it.
I’m not sure what all I’m gonna do tomorrow, but I hope they have something for me to work on. I extended my time at Continuum by one week, so I will be here for next week as well.

So far this week I have gone to 4 different job sites and I would say that this week has been the most I’ve learned so far. During this week I have worked on another air condenser unit, I have also installed multiple ceiling lights for a home, and we have searched for water off switches for an apartment in Clayton.

Benson Hill is a plant science research center that primarily focuses on making soy and yellow pea plants more nutritious. The entire company operates around artificial intelligence which is called CropOs. All departments or “steps” in the plant transformation process use this AI. The seeds create oil, flour, and meal that is sold to a variety of manufacturing companies that create food, feed, and aquaculture feed.

This week I have been job shadowing Christine Althaber. She wears many hats for Benson Hill, but to put it plainly, she started out as a plant scientist that transformed plants then taught herself accounting and has worked her way up to managing a large majority of the budget for Benson Hill and basically fixes any problems that might occur within the departments. She has been able to explain to me what exactly Benson Hill is and how it was developed as a company. I have also been able to spend time with each of the departments to see firsthand how they operate individually as well as collaborate.

Below are samples of what they create through their gene editing.

For the next two weeks I will be working with Rhiannon Stanley. She works for Work Days which is one of the seven ministries within Restore St. Louis, and Restore St. Louis is based out of New Fellowship Church. For the first day we met with a few potentially clients, Rhiannon mostly works with women and seniors. For the rest of the day we worked on counting up receipts from the materials used by current clients. The last couple of days we were building a new wheelchair ramp for one of her clients. It didn’t take as long as it usually does to build a wheelchair ramp because the frame from the old one was still intact. (We just added a few touch ups) Beside working with Rhiannon the entire time I also got to work with a few volunteers, which was great because they all taught me different techniques for building the ramp. So far I have really enjoyed working Work Days with Rhiannon!