Senior Projects

I was able to set something up where I could go out to Phoenix and meet the people from my first four weeks, so I was in Phoenix with them for a few days this week. I was able to sit down with them and talk some more about AppSec and how cybersecurity will affect my career as an airline pilot, as well as potential career shifts based on how unmanned flight progresses in the airline industry. We spent a good long while discussing aviation cybersecurity and the future of UAVs and drones, and how that relates to what their company does. It was a great wrap-up to the first part of my project and I greatly appreciated meeting in person the faces on my computer.

The rest of the week, I was back at Panera, working 12-hour days. It was crazy again, and we had to deal with a much higher quantity of rude customers than normal. I finished the closing checklists, and they are printed and ready for use. I knew how much managers had to bounce around during the day, but I never realized how exhausting it was. This next week I start studying for my private pilot airman knowledge test.

I’ve had a good amount of rotations in craftsmen the last serval weeks.

I spent a week at Craftsmen’s family-owned sister company, Craftsmen Industries. That week I spent with the engineers who create the specially made trailers for the customer. I spend a week with the engineer manager sitting in on meetings and learning about what he does. For the next couple of days, I jumped around to see what other key employees do. I was with different engineers who design different special-made trailers. I spent one day in sales learning about how they “cold call” and learning how they sell their trailers. After my week at the sister company, I went back to Craftsmen Trailer and spent some time with the parts department learning as best I could about the ins and outs of what goes on in parts. I spent a day with the guy who orders all the parts for the parts department. I spent a day with the parts manager where I got to see how he talks with his employees and how he handles issues with these employees and problems they stumble upon. I spend a day with one of their sales guy who goes out and sells the parts to customers. I also spent a day with the guys who deal with the mechanics and give the guys in the warehouse their parts.

I’m learning a lot in each rotation and I’m excited about my next couple of weeks learning about different positions Craftsmen employees have and continue to learn about how a small relational business works.

I spent week 5 shadowing management at my job. My location is a training cafe, meaning we get managers in training (MITs) and they’re with us for 2-8 weeks learning how to do their job. We currently have an MIT, which gives us another person. We also don’t have a drive-thru. Since last Saturday, I’ve worked about 60 hours, hours managers tend to work in a week. Saturday and Sunday were normal craziness and we had to do a lot of damage control. We’re insanely short-staffed and so we had to step in and work in position quite a lot. Normally the manager in charge (MIC) floats around and runs things, checking on the dining room, line, cashiers, counting drawers, and generally not being tied down anywhere. I opened Sunday, coming in at 6 am (we open late on Sundays, normally it’s 5 am), and learned about how managers open (the manager and I were running on a combined 5 hours of sleep). They do coffees/teas, get a drawer for cashiers, print various papers out, and get a head start on any bagel orders that have come in. Sunday lunch was bad, and it set the pace and feel for the next week. After lunch, we had to stock and clean and as a rule of thumb, managers shouldn’t leave until things are well set up for the rest of the day, so I got out of there just before 4. On Monday, I worked 13:00-close, Tuesday and Wednesday from 12:00-close, and Thursday I worked 10:00- 21:30. For closing, since we are a training cafe, the standards are higher, which means we get out later. We close at 21:00, but I didn’t get out before 23:00 any day this week, it tended to be 23:30, or later. Tuesday I got out at midnight. Suffice to say, I was a little tired. Basically, if I wasn’t at work, I was sleeping.

We’re terribly short-staffed during the afternoon when we have to get everything done and set up for dinner, a change that has happened in the last 2 weeks. For most of the week, it would be the manager, me, and our dishwasher for an hour or two in the afternoon. This was probably the most real manager experience I had throughout the week. I was completely alone on the line and the manager was completely alone ringing. On Monday, I helped set up for truck, which was supposed to come Sunday night but didn’t. It ended up showing up at 19:00 on Monday, while we were busy, delivering half the stuff, then showing up at 22:00 and delivering everything else, which threw off our schedule to put everything away. Because of the supply chain and understaffing truck schedule was thrown off this week. On Tuesday, I helped with pull thaw, an hour or more lengthy process. On Wednesday, I worked on closing checklists for dining room, bakery, and line. I finished the line close checklist and will work on dining room and bakery the rest of this week and next. They will be used to train new associates, and be a backup for both MITs and new team managers. Just as we were finishing up closing on Wednesday, truck came and we skedaddled. On Thursday, we found out truck put the stuff in the wrong spot, and I helped put truck away. I also sat down with the food cost manager and learned about how food costs work. After that conversation, I worked on a spreadsheet for leftover bakery product, which will be used to help other managers and MITs understand the concept.

This past week was my first week with Micah Roufa at Tri-Co inc. Tri-Co is a general contractor that renovates and builds schools. The current project is a $22 million renovation and addition to Maplewood High School. Micah is the Project Manager so I am following him as he coordinates all the subcontractors and deals with all the issues that arise. I spent most of the week helping Micah log subcontractor data and taking pictures of all work that is performed on site as well as sitting in on meetings with subcontractors and representatives from the school district. I also helped with some manual labor whenever it was needed.

My last week at Fred Weber was a weird one because I was sick one day and I had two all day golf tournaments for school CD. I spent Tuesday and Thursday finishing up the competitors list for the VP. Overall, I’m really happy with how the four weeks at Fred Weber went and I’m grateful for everyone who spent their time teaching everything about what Fred Weber does.

The first three days of my internship at Meramec state park have been different than I expected. The first day, I got a tour of the park from my boss Mr.Fink. The second half of the day I loaded up some wood with one of my other bosses (Carrie) and we drove to a neighboring park called Onondaga. We had extra wood left over from the off season so we gave it to Onondaga. The second day of my Internship me and Carrie spent most of the morning picking up trash scattered around the park. We also replaced a sign that somebody had run over. the second half of the day we hauled more wood to Onondaga and I got to drive some trucks around over there, because they needed an extra driver. On the third day, I spent the first half mulching with Carrie around the park. We have to mulch the campground because the grass on some of the campsites wont grow back. When the grass doesn’t grow back it just ends up muddy, and nobody wants to stand in mud. We use the mulch to cover the mud so it looks better and people have something to stand on. In the Afternoon Carrie had to leave so I was mulching by myself. I got to drive the trucks around and I think everyone was impressed with how hard I worked at the end of the day.

As I solve harder and harder problems my brain can get fried. The problem solving can be fun, but I can’t sit and code for more than an hour and a half at a time without it taking a mental toll. I need to take quite a few breaks durring the day. It’s hard but I’m still figuring it out. I don’t know everything there is to know. In my mind, this is just part of the learning process

CodeAbbey is significently harder than Discovery. I really just learned the consepts in Discovery while CodeAbbey is testing me on what I know. The problem solving aspect requires critical thinking. Luckly both were Python 3 so I didnt have to change what I already understood. The problem I’m working on now is programing the computer to count vowels. CodeAbbey is chalenging, but in a good way. It’s chalenging is the sense of learning.

day 13- That day I worked in the front office again with Taylor. I learned about the crash of their old website called quick books. The crash of this website screwed up their whole system and made everything hard to manage. I also learned how to work their new website called NetSuite.

day 14- On the 14th day at pem racing I spent most of it taking calls and doing a lot of the other things I had learned at the front office. At the end of the day they gave me some shirts and other things and told me they were very happy I had worked there and that I could come back anytime, which made me feel very good about the work I did.

My time at Freeport draws to a close today and so everything is wrapping up. The sprint finished Wednesday and so we had a meeting then to analyze the data for the team’s performance and plan for this next sprint. I’ve really learned a lot from this internship, looking back. Cybersecurity seemed a little intimidating, like hacking and quasi-legal activities, but it’s turned out to be a normal corporate job. It has reaffirmed my career goals, but also shown I could make cyber work either on the side or as a minor.

Tomorrow, on Saturday, I start at Bread Co. and I’ll be there for the next two weeks.