Senior Projects

The first couple of days in the first week of my senior project went by very slowly with little work to do. This is because of my brother Nathan’s recent t-cell aggressive cancer diagnosis. I was going to shadow my dad, but my dad has been in the hospital constantly because of my brother so we’ve gotten very few opportunities to get senior project work done. Sometimes life doesn’t always go as planned so I did my best to stay patient and communicate with my dad so we could do senior project work at a short notice.

For the second half of week one, I spent my days shadowing the behavioral therapists at Continuum as they went about their day working with the kids there. For the most part, I observed and didn’t interact in the activities. I didn’t want to interrupt or be a distraction to the class. Towards the end of the week, however, I started talking more to the RBTs and getting to know them a bit better. I’d say I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable around the staff and students. The two boys that I babysat on Monday talked to me a lot and seem to have taken a liking to me. On Friday, I asked if I could learn a little bit more about the treatment plans of some of the kids. It’s been very interesting to learn about the goals for each kid and the plan for completing those goals. Next week, I think I will be helping to prepare materials for some activities and projects. I hope that I will be able to learn a little bit more about the administrative side of things. I want to know a little bit more about what goes on behind the scenes as far as communicating with parents and insurance.

On Friday, I went into our Swansea office to fix someones computer. While I was there, I had my shoulder pain checked out and I got some stuff done to it. My shoulder doesn’t hurt anymore but it was painful at the time of getting the procedure done. I got dry needling done to my shoulder. It is like acupuncture but with a bigger needle. Over all an easy experience.

Through the continuation of the week, I have been able to not only do groundwork with specific horses but ride them as well. My days consist mostly of barn chores and discussions with volunteers and management on the operations that take place at the ranch. I love that I have been able to meet knew people everyday, and therefore continue to gather different perspectives of the ranch. All feedback has been positive, and I am excited for what next week holds. Photos to come.

This week has been a busy one! I’ve worked at The Sheldon every day this week on a show. Yesterday was pretty crazy because a lot of people came to the show early. I was given the job of handing out line tickets. People were so worried about getting in that they were pushing other people out of the way! It was pretty crazy. But after everyone got in and the show started it calmed down and I got to relax a bit in the box office. Yesterday was definitely the craziest night so far!

For the second half of the week I have gotten to observe more CP (care and protection) and delinquency cases in court. I also got to watch my first TPR trial, which is where the parents rights are officially terminated. I also got to watch the PC (protective custody) hearing on one of Robyn’s cases. A PC hearing has to happen within three day of the child being removed by CD (children’s division) and it is to decide if the child is going to stay in CD custody or the parent’s custody until adjudication (trial). The adjudication happens around thirty days after the PC hearing, and has too have happened before the sixty day mark. When I am not observing court, I am in Robyn’s office asking her many questions as she works on different cases. This week we have had a lot of discussions about the misconceptions people have about juvenile court system, and that is mostly because I can’t stop bringing up the fact that I think what I am learning right now should be common knowledge to everyone.

Day 1 – Today I didn’t really do much but I learned that the next 2 weeks is a good opportunity to learn some life skills even if I might already know some of them. The cleaners didn’t come by last Friday so me and Mr Platz had to do the trash and mop the floor. We also had to refill some spray bottles with soap. The most exciting part of today was putting up the umbrella on the playground. It was really nice outside and something about doing some hard work was just relaxing to me because it was a beautiful day and I could take my mind off of things that were disturbing me. We made it a lot more difficult than it had to be putting up the umbrella but in the end we used our brains and got it done nice and easy.

Day 2 – Today Mr. Platz was gone so I ended up doing some more IT work at school with Lou Filla. I had one goal today which took me all day and that was sorting out the shelves inside the cafeteria closet. Everything was a massive mess and there were a lot of unopened products that were waiting to be found. Out of those unopened products there was an unused projector, a security system, and an unused filing machine for printers. What made it annoying to get through everything in the closet was the fact that there were so many monitors to try and find space for. I ended up thinking about it for a minute and decided that I’d sort out the shelves big objects up top and lighter objects as you go down. At the end of the day there was a bunch of junk that Lou wanted to take to his car. When I had hauled it all outside into his car I had finished my work for today.

Day 3 – Today Mr. Platz was back and it was a really fun day for me. It was nice outside yet again and it was a perfect day to do some cleaning. Today I was given the assignment of bringing down the bleachers for trivia night, or at least I thought so, they never really told me why but I did it anyway. All of the bleachers were outside on the upper parking lot and I had to roll each and everyone of the bleachers all the way down and around to the door up front. After getting all of the bleachers down I needed to do some cleaning because they had mud and grass all over them. I started off with a bucket, a brush, and a mission. I started scrubbing away and dumping water on it for about an hour and it was finally so shiny it was blinding. I flipped it up to take it inside and then I saw all of the grass stuck under it and felt defeated. Luckily for me I still have the ace up my sleeve which was the hose I had in the back of the school. While I was on the way back to use the hose Mrs. Lloyd decided to give me more trouble than I asked for. She needed me to unload some groceries that were meant for trivia night and hide them in the office closet. That side job took me about 15 minutes – 20 minutes. When I had finished I was back on my determined mission to make those bleachers spotless. I hooked up the hose head I had found on the ground and I started blasting the bleachers. This was probably the most fun I had cleaning anything ever considering I never had an interest in cleaning. But as I cleaned stuff up the past 2 weeks in different ways I am starting to learn that cleaning is something I don’t hate for some reason. Anyway I sprayed the bleachers for about an hour and a half to get off as much as possible. There were a few people that got caught in the crossfire but they were all ok. I did end up spraying myself with the hose quite a bit as well considering it was hot and I also just couldn’t help myself. Anyway when I had fulfilled my mission I took the bleachers inside and that had wrapped up my day. This was definitely one of my more fun days so far in senior projects just because senior projects can really develop you as a person. You end up learning things about yourself that you hadn’t known before while going out and doing different sorts of things and meeting lots of different people along the way. Or maybe I just loved spraying myself with a hose for some reason… Either way it was really fun.

Day 4 – Today was a day I ended up doing some constructing. My goal for today was to build something that would hang up on the wall for Lou so he could organize all of his cables in the cafeteria closet. Today I had a lot of blisters and it made me pretty dang tired. I started off getting the plan from Mr. Platz which was a lot more simple to follow than I would have imagined. The plan was to hammer some nails into some wood for the cables, drill holes in the closet for anchors and then hang it up. We had some really long planks so we had to start by measuring how much we needed to fill the space we had. We ended up making the planks five feet long and we had two of them so when the cords would hang down they wouldn’t get mixed up or tangled. After we had cut the wood we measured how many nails we were going to hammer in and marked each of the spots and pre drilled holes. We also marked where our anchors would be so we wouldn’t end up putting too many nails in and splitting the wood. Spoiler we ended up splitting it a bit in the end… Anyway when everything was marked he sent me outside to hammer all of the nails in and I hadn’t really used a hammer that much before then so you can imagine how it started. I ended up hitting my hand a few times and making really bad choices but, the more mistakes I made the better I was getting at it until eventually, I was basically a pro. It was tiring though considering I was hammering about 35 nails or something like that and I was already tired after using a dull hand saw to try and cut the wood. After I had finished hammering in all of the nails this is where I got to use the fun tools. I brought the wood back inside and took it to the cafeteria closet so I could begin to make holes in the wall to hang it up. At this point I got to use the demolition hammer. And this was probably the most fun tool I’ll ever be allowed to use for the rest of my time with Mr. Platz. We held up the wood and used the pre-drilled holes to mark up where we needed to make holes in the wall. After we did that it was time to drill and I have a small clip I can hopefully post as well of me drilling my first hole. After finishing up all of the holes we hammered in the anchors and hooked the wood up to the wall and our job was done.

This week I have been helping out at Strong Tower Ranch. It is a ranch ministry that does equine therapy as well as equine-assisted therapy for children. So far, I have shadowed the director, Lori Brooks, and have learned the hierarchy and setup of a non-profit organization. She has also demonstrated the “games” and ground work that is done with the horses that all of the children do before they get in the saddle. Today, I shadowed barn manager, Krystal, and helped with chores throughout the property. Horsemanship is just one category of the ranch since they also offer day camps in the summer. I have really enjoyed working here so far and am excited for the next week and a half!

So far this week I have been doing more housekeeping. I have cleaned a statue, cleaned garage floor, moved street cones, replaced towels in the fitness room, replaced toilet paper in bathrooms, checked the cleaning supplies, cleaned the coffee containers, and cleaned an elevator. I have also had to watch Steve talk to some contractors so now I know that you have to be confident and stern when talking to them, because they know if you don’t know what your talking about or not. With that I had to check on contractors who were on the tenth floor and reported them back to Steve. But Steve’s job is not only maintenance it is also payroll, project management, and H.R. (human resources). So I am getting a little bit of everything with this project.

Today was a fun day at the Sheldon. I arrived at 9am and was assigned a special task for after the coffee concert. I was given flyers and a list of coffee shops and libraries in the area. I was told to go and post the flyers to the places on the list. The flyers were advertisements for kids summer camps. After helping with the coffee concert, I headed out on my journey. I posted the flyers all around so hopefully we will get at least a few sign ups because of those! Definitely a good day!