Senior Projects

As I said before this week did not go to plan but it was still very productive. The first three days I made edits on the makerspace ecommerce site and started building my own website. The makerspace one is finished. I added a creators page which will highlight students who work in the makerspace along with that I did some general organizing to the site and added more products to the store. My site is just a personal profile, I copied my makerspace blogs over to my website, I have an about me, contact me, racing, and makerspace page. I also worked on making a resume which will be linked to my site. This website will come in handy to show future employers, interns, or any one else if they want to learn more about me. Thursday and Friday I was able to meet with my uncle and talk about owning a franchise. These meetings were extremely helpful and I learned a ton! Some key points we covered were, what are the main differences between a personal business and franchise? What were your biggest challenges? What skills would have been nice to have coming out of college? How do you keep growing your businesses? How do you retain employees? Best leadership skills to have? and much more. Overall this week was extremely productive and I learned a lot. The next three weeks I will be interning at Garrison Limited. This will include shadowing Garrison the owner and shadowing diffrent trades and business he works with flipping houses.

I had a lot of fun this week. I spent Monday in the library and in the studio. On Tuesday, the highlight of my day was going to the Botanical Gardens, which I’ll talk more about later. Wednesday morning, I went to downtown Washington. Yesterday morning, I practiced anatomy at home. Today, I went to downtown Washington again and spent the afternoon in the studio. The week started out a bit rough, but it got so much easier as it went on. I felt a lot of things click with me, whether it was painting, writing, or drawing. I’m not usually this lucky, so I’m trying to remember how I felt this week.

I finished illustrating 5 pages from the first chapter this week, and I attached a couple down below. They’re not finished (or aesthetically pleasing), but it’s normal for first drafts to not be fully realized. I’ve been trying to use a little reference as I can, so I’ve been guessing what something looks like most of the time. I also haven’t added speech bubbles yet, because I wanted to try a new technique where I cut them out of paper and stick them in the panels instead of drawing them in. I’ll add them later when I’m cleaning up the pages. Also, I won’t be able to get past the first chapter before the quarter ends, because this process has been taking a lot longer than I anticipated, unfortunately. In spite of that, I’ve been enjoying working on this project.

When I was live sketching this week, I tried to improve my framing and composition. I would practice that by taking a picture of the scene I wanted to paint and trying to copy the composition (once I had mapped that out, I stopped using the picture). I also tried to improve my color choices, but that was more of a side quest. None of the things I made were masterpieces, but my skills got a lot stronger. At the Botanical Gardens, there are currently a bunch of origami statues scattered around, which were very fun to draw. There were two paper boat statues cleverly placed floating on a lake in the Japanese garden, so I had to draw them. I also sat down near the koi pond and tried to paint an azalea bush and the koi themselves, which were difficult because they kept moving. Once I was done there, I spent some time in the Chinese garden too.

I finished memorizing Sonnet 81 this week, and I’m going to pick another sonnet to memorize next week. I also finished Selected Poems by Gwendolyn Brooks, and I started Good Poems by Garrison Keillor. (To be clear: Good Poems is a compilation of poems by several people, not a book of poems written by Garrison Keillor.) I’ve spent more time writing this week, which has been really good.

In Arabic, I’ve started to memorize a new set of vocabulary words. There are also Arabic poems in my textbook, so Mrs. Hassan and I have been reading them aloud. They’re very abstract, which makes them hard to translate, but they sound lovely. I’ve kept practicing verb conjugation, which has been helping a lot.

Last Friday (4/23/21) there was just a bunch of vaccinations we had a total of 3 dog vaccinations that day. One of the dogs ate a sock so they have him this medicine through his eye that induced the vomiting. Another one of the dogs had a Thor or a bee sing in his foot, they weren’t entirely sure what it was but for this dog he was kind of aggressive so they had to sedate him to get it out. On Monday (4/20/21) the first patient was a 1 year old cat who was very sick she had FIP which is a really bad illness for cats and isn’t curable and she would constantly be in pain so the owner decided to put her down. We also had 2 more vaccinations that day one in a dog and one in a cat. We had a 14 week old lab mixed with Rottweiler puppy come in and he was absolutely adorable and sweet. We had 2 dogs come in for lumps on them which just ended up being fatty growths which aren’t harmful. We also had a dog come in just for a teeth check. On Tuesday (4/27/21) I didn’t go to the vet clinic because I got my second COVID shot. Wednesday (4/28/21) we had 2 vaccinations that day 1 of them was for a cat and the other one was for a 14 week old corgi puppy. One of the dogs came in because he was having seizures and wasn’t in the greatest living environment before his new owner. Another one of the dogs that came in had a huge disgusting cyst on his side that they had to extract and they were poking around at it to get everything out of it and it was really disgusting both in sight and smell. I almost passed out with that one but I think that was because I was already nauseous from my second shot. One dog had a hip problem and another one had an eye infection. Thursday (4/29/21) when I first got there I got to sit in on a surgery and they were neutering a dog, I thought this was interesting how they do it because that it isn’t how I thought they did it. One of the dogs that came in I felt so bad for because a couple of years ago he got hit by a car and hurt his back and fractured his front right leg and hurt both his back legs, so now he has a bunch of back and leg problems. So back in October he got bit by a puppy and he has been having bladder problems ever since then and just pees everywhere so they think he might have an infection so they are running a culture on it to see what’s going on with this poor guy. The 1 cat that we had for that day was just spraying which just basically means that he was just marking his territory but he was doing it all over the house. A dog came in with a split nail so they put this coating stuff on it so it didn’t hurt him so much. We also had a 10 week old puppy who came in to get vaccinations but he wasn’t also eating. Friday (4/30/21) the first dog just got vaccinations. We got this dog that came in for a recheck of his mouth because a couple of weeks ago he was at doggy daycare and ate something and his tongue got 3 times it’s size and he couldn’t put it in his mouth, today it looked so much better he could put it in his mouth there were still some sores and red but he is doing a lot better. Another dog came in for an ear infection so they just gave him some ear drops. The groomer at the vets has 2 cats that both just had kittens so she brought in 4 of them in today because they were escaping and they had an infection in their eyes. 2 of them were 4 weeks old and 2 of them were 3 weeks old. They were so small and cute. We all just held them and played with them for the longest time and then it was time for them to go back home so they could be fed. The problem with their eyes was that they had herpes in them but it isn’t the same kind of herpes that people get and it isn’t contagious from cat to human. The pictures below those are my 2 favorite ones those kittens are the 3 week old ones the black one is a female and the white one is a male. As you can tell from the picture they are really tired and this is what they did the entire time.

I am starting to work on my own now doing projects and finish binders with out the help of anyone. This week I spent all my time in the interiors library pulling off discontinued product lines. This was challenging because I had to pull every sample off the shelf and search the products serial numbers. Once again there was many rep updates. Some over zoom and some outside on the back patio. This upcoming Monday I start my first college summer class, I am very excited but nervous about the amount of homework I will be getting.

The car internship is going great. For some odd reason people are selling their Harley Davidsons. I showed a person a GTR yesterday. I am learning the visual aspect of selling cars. We have a McLaren in and it sucks. I cannot fully close the door. It struggled to stay at 1,000 rpm and there rocks chips every where. It is not in the best condition; however I bet it will be sold at auction. My first week, Parker (at auction) wholesaled a Lamborghini Gallardo for $154,000 and another broken McLaren for like $80,000.

Yesterday, the real estate internship was little boring. The agent I am shadowing is flipping a house and we had to run to the store and get supplies. I say only boring because I was standing in a Menards for an hour with no return. For him, he is (if all goes well)going to make some big profits. Part of the reason why it took so long was because the Menards staff did not know what they were doing. The biggest take away is learning how to be financially smart. Real estate for him buying or selling is a win win situation because he is an agent. He bought a rental unit through a 1031 exchange and he got a buyers agent fee. He got another building to add to his portfolio of income and he got a percentage of the price for being the buyers agent. There is a lot of money to be made., if you can successfully play the game right.

I was planning to work alongside my uncle this week who owns three cleaning authority franchises. He also flips houses on the side sometimes. His family has to quarantine because of an exposure and he has some other things he has to deal with, so I have not been able to work with him this week so far. We are planning to do some work over zoom for the rest of the week. We will be talking about the differences between owning a business and a franchise, how he has set up his business so he benefits from the income but doesn’t have to work every day, how to choose what franchise to invest in, and much more. So far this week I have been making changes to the maker space website I built last week. Dr. Urbano suggested some changes so I have been working on those. I have also been building a personal website which should be finished by the end of the week. Even though I haven’t been able to do what I planned it has been a very productive week.

Today I was in the shop again. I started out by sweeping the entire floor. This may sound like an easy job, which it kind of is, but it takes a very long time as the shop is quite large and there is a ton of sawdust that gets built up over time. Imagine cleaning a room the size of the maker space but twice as big and all covered in thick sawdust. After that I actually got to put together my first cabinet. It was a pretty small one and all I had to do was glue the pieces together, then shoot them with a staple gun, and then screw them together. I only made one because it was all they had for me, so after that I did some more edge banding for the rest of the day. Below is a picture of the cabinet I assembled.

I got to drive a Nissan GTR to get emissions and some other tests ran on it. I stalled a Corvette on a hill, in front of the owner (it was my first time driving a manual Corvette and I was also a bit nervous). Today had its ups and downs. Selling a product is super hard. I am supposed to make people want to buy a car through the description. It is not the easiest thing to do.

Today, we showed a property that was not a house. It was a piece of land. It was 33 acres worth half a million dollars. The client is also looking for a home to rent or buy and he is looking for land. In the end, he is only buying one; however we just broaden our business by asking him where he is currently staying. I sent him a few properties where he was looking regarding homes and plots of land (there was no rentals where he wanted).

Today, I was apart of hosting an open house. A big part of life is making people want you. Today I was reminded of that. If you remember when I gave presentations in school, my voice was all monotone (even in most conversations). Presentation in the real world includes voice dynamics. In this case, people are about to spend at least $339k on a house, the agent (or me) should sound excited when showing this house (love it or hate it). I also got a little insight about strategy. I learned what to take into consideration when placing open house signs.

No car dealership report today; however I do think we have a Ferrari 458 Spyder. I am listing a BMW S1000RR. I know a lot of people saw it on my Snapchat and Instagram stories. I believe I am doing that start to finish. I took videos and pictures of the motorcycle, now I need to list it.

Today at the dealership, I wrote up a description on a 2007 Mustang. It was a limited edition model created by Parnelli Jones and Steve Saleen. It is a 5-speed manual with special edition mats, pedals, and a shift knob. I, stupidly, didn’t know where reverse was because there were no indicators (also not knowing it was a 5 speed at the time). I got to move some cool vehicles around. Pictured is a Lamborghini Huracan Performante with full carbon fiber racing seats and a BMW S1000RR. I also continued with more office work and Walkaround videos.

Today on the car ride to a listing appointment, I ran comps on a duplex located in The Southampton. I also did some formulas on excel for comps for the listing that we were going to. Even the formulas from Makerspace Business Club came in handy in the real world. It’s actually quite on point with the real world. Oddly enough this client works for Carrollton Bank so we had a conversation after. I am only bringing this up because of how important customer service is. People want business to be intentional vs transactional. Carrollton Bank strives to create personal connections and I saw Carrollton win business because of that today and the two weeks that I was there.