Senior Projects

On Friday I had the opportunity to tour the detention center connected to the courthouse. There are four units I believe: one for girls and the rest for boys. Right now there are only 25 kids there but they can hold up to 100. When kids are brought in for a crime, they have to be given a hearing at max three days after they arrive. The hearings typically determine what is in the best interest of the juvenile and the community to determine how long they should stay, or depending on the crime committed, until they have trial. The units themselves have the rooms with beds, a toilet, a sink, and a pillow and blanket. They have a TV in the unit as well as a bench area. If the children do well in detention they are rewarded with a night in the game room where there is ping pong among other games. The tour was very interesting and I’ll elaborate in my presentation, but unfortunately I couldn’t take any pictures inside.

Yesterday I was given the address of one of the properties they are working on right now, and I needed to look and houses in the area that have sold recently that are close to how the house is going to be when it’s done. On zillow.com I drew a circle around the area where the house is put in the specs of the house, and saw different houses around that have sold recently. You can not see how much the house sold for on zillow so I needed to send the address of the place to Siu, and she gave me the price. After I got a few similar houses I averaged them out by their square footage and made an estimate on how much we should list the house that is being renovated right now. 

Today I built some cabinets for one of the houses they are working on.

These are a few past projects that they have flipped:

Friday, 5/3:

My Friday started out like usual at the Kids Clubhouse for storytelling. The theme was the World’s Fair, so we had a book about ice cream and the olympics. There was a really sweet little boy, about four or five years old, who sat next to me and was very enthusiastic about listening to the stories and singing the songs. The kids also made a ferris wheel craft out of cupcake liners. We had a lot of visitors today and a lot of people who were curious about the clubhouse whether they visited it or not. I worked the desk so I was in charge of stamping hands and taking zip codes, as well as giving directions to other visitors. I worked the clubhouse until noon and then went on my lunchbreak. Now, after my lunch break we had a *VERY* special group coming in! Can you guess who it is? It’s The Fulton School Junior U.S. History Class with Mrs. Bryan!!! I was free from noon until 5:00 so I got to stop by and explain different things to the group.

OK, also I am not gonna go in depth with this since I have a 500 word limit, but “Challengers” was an AMAZING movie. The trailers did not even do it justice to how good it actually was. It was just really fun, but I was correct in my assumption as Zendaya was NOT phenomenal. Was she good? Yes, but phenomenal? No. I just feel like there is no emotion in her performances in the case of this it did work because her character, Taishi, is supposed to be cold and because of this flat acting her performances really make me feel nothing, they’re honestly kind of boring. I think a much better, more emotional actress, who actually deserves an Emmy (“Oh no, she didn’t just say that!” – the Zendaya fan club, right now) is Sophie Nelisse for her role as teen Shauna in “Yellowjackets” now that moved me to tears. The real stars of “Challengers” are Josh O’Connor as Patrick Zweig and Mike Faist as Art Donaldson, but Zendaya’s Taishi is completely necessary because she is the catalyst (oh yeah, I do know STEM stuff!) for the men’s rivalry, without her there is no story. If you would like to read my full review and thoughts on the movie, you can check out my Substack. I will say it was so good that my mom and I plan on going to the theaters on Saturday to watch it again.

Thursday, 5/2:

I started my Thursday at the Key Bistro Cafe. It was pretty busy and we had smaller staff then usual, so it was hectic! I had my first frustrated customer. They weren’t angry, but they were frustrated on the food wait time, which I completely understand because we have all been there before– you’re hungry, you’ve placed your order, you’re really hungry, and you keep seeing other people get their food, as a very hungry person, it definitely gets to me, too! Thankfully, she understood, and their food came out shortly after I spoke with them, so that was good! One thing that has stressed me out is that if I would have to deal with not just a person who was a little frustrated, I can handle that, but a person who is like really angry, now that scares me! Today must have been just my luck because there was a customer who was quite angry and actually threatened not to pay their bill— they bought probably about $50 worth of food and drinks since they were there with two others. I referred them to Char at the Express Cafe, even though they were in the sit down portion, normally you can’t do this, but we made an exception. The customer then said something pretty snarky, but I just let it go and continued my shift, there is really no point in arguing with a person like that because they won’t understand. Later there was a really nice woman who said that I made her experience wonderful, so that was nice to hear! I also got a surprise visit from Ashtyn Fry (used to go to TFS) and her family, so I got to chat with them, which was very cool. From 2:00 to 3:00 I helped cut out paper school buses from a K-12 craft. Then from 3:00 to 5:00, Hanna gave me a list of locations to take photos of that offer accessibility for disabled people. Next I will put them in a Google Doc with a caption description and then they will go into Hanna powerpoint presentation. At 5:00 to 6:00 I was a gallery attendant at Coloring STL then from 6:00 to 7:00 I worked the World’s Fair gallery and talked at length with a visitor about the World’s Fair. That was pretty cool, since normally I don’t get to do that and if I want to become an official tour guide I have to go through more training and there just wasn’t enough time for it on my senior project, but I would love to do it in the summer. Then I just got to enjoy the concert. It was a Chaka Khan tribute, if you don’t know who that is, you are probably playing yourself, do you know the song “I’m Every Woman”? Because if you do then you sort of know her because she sings that song, but it was also covered by Whitney Houston. IT WAS PACKED!!! There were definitely like 2,000 to 3,000 people there. What was cool is that it was all kinds of people: young and old, men and women, etc. I was pleasantly surprised by the concert because I wasn’t sure if I would like it, but the music was very fun. Since this post is long and I don’t want to take up too much space on the blog because that would just be inconsiderate of me, I will be making a separate post about Friday since it should be an interesting day!

This week, I worked with Siu and Karim Salem. They are both real estate investors and agents. They were first investors, but they did not want to pay agent fees whenever they were selling a house, so they decided to become agents. They mainly buy trashed and old houses, re-model them, and then sell them or rent them. They mainly focus on the Hispanic community because they are bilingual. The niche gives them an upper hand over everyone else. They also represent mainly Hispanics as their agent when buying or selling a house. They have three projects going on right now. Siu and Karim don’t do the remodeling; they hire people, so every day, I visited them to make sure that everything was going well with the project. They try to finish a flip in three weeks. Karim and I had to go out and get flooring, windows, and lights for the houses one of the days.

This is the insides of two of the houses being remodeled right now:

It’s been a light week, mostly making scans, copies, working on newsletters, finding properties, and meetings, which is a very good thing because I’m mega sick right now. At first I thought it was just my allergies acting up but it’s been three days now and I’m only feeling worse… Luckily my employers have been very understanding, though this will likely be my only post this week.

This week I’ve gotten a better grasp of what Robyn does and the types of cases she deals with. Last week one of the judges turned 70, and in Missouri any judge that turns 70 is forced to retire, so a new judge arrived. Because Robyn has more experience here, they reassigned her to protection services in court room 1 with the new judge because he’s never worked a Juvenile Court. Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays is when he has his review hearing dockets and he’ll also do detention hearings before the docket if he has any. This means that Robyn has about seven review hearings on each of those days along with potential adjudications and motion hearings. Yesterday and today we were in court from 9:00 AM to lunch time going through her docket. These cases are all very complicated and most very interesting but the review hearings are essentially just to get an update on how the child is doing, so they can be a little boring over time.

Tuesday, 4/30:

So, I am back at the History Museum for a full week, sort of. Since I worked World’s Fair opening weekend and have had plenty of weeks that are well over 30 hours, usually I work somewhere between 32-40 hours a week, I get tomorrow off. I am very excited to relax some and my mom and I have a fun day planned. We are gonna go thrifting, watch ”Challengers” at Wildwood B&B, and get lunch. I am excited to see ”Challengers” because personally, I don’t think Zendaya has that big of acting chops, but I have heard she is very good in the movie, so I will see for myself. Today has been pretty relaxed. I worked storytime, helped Julie, Andy, Emily, Maggie, and Elena prepare a craft for tomorrow. Then I attended a K-12 education department meeting. It was pretty short and then we just celebrated Don Davis’s (Julie’s dad’s) birthday. I am here until 4:00, but right now I have a break so I am just finishing up ”The Road”. I am bit tired because last night my dad and I went to get late night hamburgers (it was like 9:30, but for my dad it was late!), anyways I drank like a 30 oz Diet Coke so then I couldn’t fall asleep, so I used my time to watch the movie ”American Pie” instead of cleaning my room! I can not disclose the plot of ”American Pie” on this blog, so you will have to Google it yourself! I will say, I was pleasantly surprised given the plot and themes of the movie that it actually had a fair amount of depth. Most of the characters were pretty well written with good arcs, and even the female characters were not just one dimensional characters. I was impressed by this since many teen movies where the central characters are teen males often just write off the female characters as shallow or objects of desire.

These last couple of weeks just seem to fly by, knowing that we’re nearing the end of our Senior Project is surprising. It feels like my weeks seem to blur together, already forgetting my first couple weeks as a new face in the shop. I’ve found my place amongst all the artists- being here long enough to joke, tease and laugh with everyone like we’re close friends. There is still a level of professionalism in the building but nothing even close to how it is in any past jobs I’ve worked. No one seems to care here, it would be a stretch to say we’re ”like one big family” because it doesn’t feel forced, It’s like we’re all friends. I’ve gotten used to clocking in at 10:30am to clean, sweep, sanitize, and schedule any media posts for the first few hours only to leave the rest of my shift to whatever I desire. I draw for most of my time, interact with the guests and become a middle man of sorts (I’m who the artists go to when they need something in the shop that Chelsea needs to order or needs to be communicated with her.) The level at which they trust me is astounding- the owner included. In the second week Chelsea had given me a key to the shop, a shocking action because only a few artists in the shop have a key.

Monday – Shadowing Chris at LifeTime.

1. Nothing unusual happened. 10-12 normal towels folding.
2. 1-2 Chris meeting. I think I didn’t take any notes on this one.

Wednesday – Shadowing Chris at LifeTime.

1. I saw a guy holding a plates of samples of something and asked people to try. I passed him for like 2 times and he did not ask me. In fact I have no interest in trying or buying that anyways, but I do want to talk to him and ask him a few questions because I was bored.
2. Jamie told me that’s Mike, the cafeteria manager or something else, and he is usually pretty busy. I asked Chris if I can schedule a talk with Mike on next Monday and he said yes. So right now I’m writing down some questions for it.
3. I also asked Chris if I can volunteer at the cafeteria, but he said the only thing I can do is pretty much operational stuff. Even working at the cafeteria required a license or something. However, I certainly did try my best to find stuff to do and talk to people in order to figure out the business structure behind LifeTime WestCounty.
4. 1-2 Chris‘s meeting with one of his team member. They were just chatting. That guy’s a Christian and still think about LifeTime business after work. They even talked about George Washington for some reason.

Tuesday, Thursday, Friday: I was doing some stuff to apply Canada Visa, I drove into the city and I don’t like it there. Coursera went behind the schedule but it’s gonna be fine.