Senior Projects

I will be following around each depart of Craftsmen Trailer. Craftsmen sell and repair tractor-trailers. Over my eight weeks, I will be learning about how a business like crafts works, and hopefully by the end I will be more interested in business than I was before Craftsmen.

I will spend my first four weeks working with Freeport-McMoRan, a Phoenix-based mining company. I will be working within their cybersecurity department, learning all there is to know about cybersecurity. I’m going into this with minimal experience in the industry. I will shadow managers at St. Louis Bread Co. for these next two weeks, getting a more in-depth view of day-to-day and long-term operations. This will look like working on truck orders, both ordering and putting deliveries away, counting cash drawers and safes, and looking at cafe operations from a management perspective. I will spend the final two weeks studying for the private pilot airman knowledge test. That will be studying textbooks and test prep books that the FAA supply, memorizing regulations, learning about meteorology, terminology, and airplane parts. I’m enthusiastic about this and very much so looking forward to my senior project.

For my senior project I will be spending my time on the Schenk family farm, where I will be ranch managing. The job entails me feeding the cows, checking and making sure they are healthy, giving them their shots, basically all the fundamental things that need to be done to make sure the the cows are healthy when they are fully grown. Mr. Schenk and I will also be doing side project where he and I will be constructing things to make the cows lives more comfortable. For example he and I discussed talking about building a fence so the cows have more room. Another thing that he and I talked was building a water system that keeps the cows waters cool in the summer. That is the rundown of what I will be doing for my senior project. I am really excited to begin and get to work on the farm.

Today was my final day working on the maintenance crew at the Country Club at Saint Albans, and my final day of work for my senior project. Today they had me pick up the tees on the driving range to get them out of the way for the mower. After that they had me do the water and trash for both courses, and after lunch I weed whacked a bunch of the creeks. This job was a great experience for me and I actually really enjoyed it. Getting up at 5:30 everyday wasn’t my favorite part, but the work itself was actually really enjoyable. I feel like I learned a lot about how they keep the course in playable condition and how much planning and effort it takes to make sure everything that needs to happen gets done. The jobs that I was doing there actually felt like they mattered because they did. The things I was doing at the cabinetry place were cool and interesting and might have helped a little bit, but at the club I felt like I was actually helping and doing something that needed to be done, which made it really fun but also rewarding. I also really liked getting to work outdoors and not be looking at a computer or stuck inside all day. I actually liked it so much that I might go work there as a summer job. I’m really glad that I was able to work there and hope that I can go back.

Today was another pretty wet day so I only worked until lunch and then headed out. The guys on the maintenance crew wanted to put out the black tee markers, which are the ones farthest back from the hole, since they had not been out in a long time. They had just gotten new markers for the whites, so they had me spray paint the old white markers black. After that I went out and followed the tee mower and replaced the tee markers after he was finished mowing. I got soaked while I was waiting for him so they just sent me home for the day.

Today was a pretty rainy day so it didn’t last very long. I got to work around 7:00 and was given the task of weed whacking around the parking lot. Since the bigger mowers can’t get in close to the trees and signs we have to use the weed whackers. There wasn’t a whole lot that needed to be done so once I had finished that I went over and helped out the landscaping crew for the rest of the day. Me and a couple of other guys spent a majority of the time just pulling up small weeds from the ground and clearing out the garden beds. After we finished that I headed home.

You might have heard the term “everything is for sale for the right price”. On the Ferrari listing, we found out that the suitcase and tools are worth a lot of money. We could make an extra 2,000 or so. The car is worth $70,000-$80,000 and it just makes sense to sell them separately; however we decide to throw in the owners manual with the car.

Same deal with the real estate, when you schedule everything back to back there is no time for error. We sat at the bank for a long time because the insurance company did not endorse the check correctly. Time is valuable and in this case time is actual money. Why spend money when you dont have to? Lesson here is nothing is free.

I listed the Ferrari for an online auction. I have my fingers crossed, hoping that it sells for $80,000. That will be very cool. I love this Ferrari and to a non-car person this could be a Testarossa for all they know. This is the first gated-manual I have driven. Today we had some high school students come in on a field trip. I got to move some cars to stage them. I took inventory photos of a Rolls Royce Dawn. Despite it being broken, it is cool because it looks like it’s lowered. It sits just like the one in the Migo’s music video.

Details are key. The market is crazy right now and you have to be aggressive to get a house. We had an aggressive deal , which was only contingent on financing. Someone put information in the seller’s disclosure that was false. We are in a contract and there’s no turning back. The McCausland flip is going well. The mobile home park is what it is. The agent I am shadowing evicted like five people last week.

Week two was filled up with a big variety of projects. I remodeled some tables for a costumer. This included sanding it down, taping, and painting. While in the office I did some market research, filling, and other computer work. One market I researched was the surrounding Denver area. A client wanted a house in the $300,000 to $700,000 range that they could renovate and flip. I also continued to write invoice’s and estimates for projects they were working on. The rest of the time was filled up driving to clients houses to check on the work being done and meeting trades men there. We also went to some furniture and bedding stores to look for some items for a room in process.

This week, I cleaned up the pages of the first chapter of the Arlys stories. I decided to redraw a couple pages, which set me back a few days. When I was cleaning up, I would catch any mistakes I’d made, fix a panel’s composition, and add the speech bubbles. I tried a different method this time, which was writing the words on a separate piece of paper, cutting them out, and sticking them into the panels with washi tape. This way, I can play a bit with how the speech bubbles are arranged. So far, I’ve filled up at least a third of my sketchbook with just drawings from the first chapter, and I’m happy with how far I’ve come with it.

I kept going out every morning to do live sketches, and I went to the Saint Louis Zoo on Tuesday. The original plan was to revisit the Art Museum, but I decided at the last minute to go to the zoo instead. I had a lot more luck there than I’d have had at the art museum, I think. A lot of the animals were active that day, and even though they were moving, they still stayed in the same general position, so they weren’t too difficult to draw. It was probably the best day I’ve had with live sketches this week.

I worked a lot more on Sonnet 81 this week. I looked for a recording on YouTube, because I wanted to hear it spoken. I found a really good one by Ian McKellen, who plays Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings movies (among other things). It really helped me get my bearings, and I understand the language a bit more now. I read through Here and Now by Stephen Dunn, and started Poetry Speaks, which is a huge compilation of poems with audio tracks and artist bios included. It will probably last me until the end of senior projects. In addition to that, next week I’ll start in on When I Grow Up I Want to Be a Further List of Possibilities by Chen Chen.

I kept going with the vocabulary from last week, and this week I’ve been memorizing another new set. I’ve also been reading paragraphs from the book, and seeing how much of it sticks. I’m really enjoying Arabic so far, and I hope to continue with it next year. (Truman unfortunately doesn’t offer classes, but I hope I have enough time to study on my own.)